The Yakima River is a tributary of the Columbia River in south central and eastern Washington state, named for the indigenous Yakama people. Lewis and Clark mention in their journals that the Chin-nâm pam called the river Tâpe têtt, possibly from the French tape-tête, meaning "head hit". The length of the river from headwaters to mouth is 214 miles (344 km), with an average drop of 9.85 feet per mile (1.866 m/km). It is the longest river entirely in Washington state.
The Missoula floods were cataclysmic glacial lake outburst floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the last ice age. These floods were the result of periodic sudden ruptures of the ice dam on the Clark Fork River that created Glacial Lake Missoula. After each ice dam rupture, the waters of the lake would rush down the Clark Fork and the Columbia River, flooding much of eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley in western Oregon. After the lake drained, the ice would reform, creating Glacial Lake Missoula again.
Lake Missoula was a prehistoric proglacial lake in western Montana that existed periodically at the end of the last ice age between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. The lake measured about 7,770 square kilometres (3,000 sq mi) and contained about 2,100 cubic kilometres (500 cu mi) of water, half the volume of Lake Michigan.
The Channeled Scablands are a relatively barren and soil-free region of interconnected relict and dry flood channels, coulees and cataracts eroded into Palouse loess and the typically flat-lying basalt flows that remain after cataclysmic floods within the southeastern part of Washington state. The Channeled Scablands were scoured by more than 40 cataclysmic floods during the Last Glacial Maximum and innumerable older cataclysmic floods over the last two million years. These floods were periodically unleashed whenever a large glacial lake broke through its ice dam and swept across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Plateau during the Pleistocene epoch. The last of the cataclysmic floods occurred between 18,200 and 14,000 years ago.
The Palouse River is a tributary of the Snake River in Washington and Idaho, in the northwest United States. It flows for 167 miles (269 km) southwestwards, primarily through the Palouse region of southeastern Washington. It is part of the Columbia River Basin, as the Snake River is a tributary of the Columbia River.
Dry Falls is a 3.5-mile-long (5.6 km) scalloped precipice with four major alcoves, in central Washington scablands. This cataract complex is on the opposite side of the Upper Grand Coulee from the Columbia River, and at the head of the Lower Grand Coulee, northern end of Lenore Canyon. According to the current geological model, catastrophic flooding channeled water at 65 miles per hour through the Upper Grand Coulee and over this 400-foot (120 m) rock face at the end of the last glaciation. It is estimated that the falls were five times the width of Niagara Falls, with ten times the flow of all the current rivers in the world combined.
A kolk is an underwater vortex causing hydrodynamic scour by rapidly rushing water past an underwater obstacle. High-velocity gradients produce a high-shear rotating column of water, similar to a tornado. Kolks can pluck multiple-ton blocks of rock and transport them in suspension for kilometres.
Wallula Gap is a large water gap of the Columbia River in the Northwestern United States, in Southeastern Washington. It cuts through the Horse Heaven Hills basalt anticlines in the Columbia River Basin, just south of the confluence of the Walla Walla and Columbia rivers.
The Touchet Formation or Touchet beds consist of well-bedded, coarse to fine sand and silt which overlays local bedrock composed of Neogene basalt of the Columbia River Basalt Group in south-central Washington and north-central Oregon. The beds consist of more than 40 to 62 distinct rhythmites – horizontal layers of sediment, each clearly demarcated from the layer below. These Touchet beds are often covered by windblown loess which were deposited later; the number of layers varies with location. The beds vary in thickness from 330 ft (100 m) at lower elevations where a number of layers can be found to a few extremely thin layers at the maximum elevation where they are observed.
Drumheller Channels National Natural Landmark showcases the Drumheller Channels, which are the most significant example in the Columbia Plateau of basalt butte-and-basin Channeled Scablands. This National Natural Landmark is an extensively eroded landscape, located in south central Washington state characterized by hundreds of isolated, steep-sided hills (buttes) surrounded by a braided network of numerous channels, all but one of which are currently dry. It is a classic example of the tremendous erosive powers of extremely large floods such as those that reformed the Columbia Plateau volcanic terrain during the late Pleistocene glacial Missoula Floods.
Sims Corner Eskers and Kames National Natural Landmark of Douglas County, Washington and nearby McNeil Canyon Haystack Rocks and Boulder Park natural landmarks contain excellent examples of Pleistocene glacial landforms. Sims Corner Eskers and Kames National Natural Landmark includes classic examples of ice stagnation landforms such as glacial erratics, terminal moraines, eskers, and kames. It is located on the Waterville Plateau of the Columbia Plateau in north central Washington state in the United States.
Moses Coulee is a canyon in the Waterville plateau region of Douglas County, Washington. Moses Coulee is the second-largest and westernmost canyon of the Channeled Scablands, located about 30 kilometres (19 mi) to the west of the larger Grand Coulee. This water channel is now dry, but during glacial periods, large outburst floods with discharges greater than 600,000 m3/s (21,000,000 cu ft/s) carved the channel. While it's clear that glacial floodwaters passed through and contributed to the erosion of Moses Coulee, the age of those waters, thus the origins of the coulee are less clear. No clear connection between the head of the coulee and major flood routes to the north, east, or west is known. Some researchers propose that floods from glacial Lake Missoula formed Moses Coulee, while others suggest that subglacial floods from the Okanogan Lobe incised the canyon. The mouth of Moses Coulee discharges into the Columbia River.
Crab Creek is a stream in the U.S. state of Washington. Named for the presence of crayfish, it is one of the few perennial streams in the Columbia Basin of central Washington, flowing from the northeastern Columbia River Plateau, roughly 5 km (3.1 mi) east of Reardan, west-southwest to empty into the Columbia River near the small town of Beverly. Its course exhibits many examples of the erosive powers of extremely large glacial Missoula Floods of the late Pleistocene, which scoured the region. In addition, Crab Creek and its region have been transformed by the large-scale irrigation of the Bureau of Reclamation's Columbia Basin Project (CBP), which has raised water table levels, significantly extending the length of Crab Creek and created new lakes and streams.
The Saddle Mountains consists of an upfolded anticline ridge of basalt in Grant County of central Washington state. The ridge, reaching to 2,700 feet, terminates in the east south of Othello, Washington near the foot of the Drumheller Channels. It continues to the west where it is broken at Sentinel Gap before ending in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.
The Horse Heaven Hills are a long range of high, rolling hills in Klickitat, Yakima, and Benton counties in Washington. The hills are an anticline ridge in the Yakima Fold Belt formed by north–south compression of lava flows in the Columbia River Basalt Group. The highest point is Bickleton Ridge in the west end of the hills. They lie within the rain shadow to the east of the Cascade Range, making them significantly drier and hotter than regions west of the Cascades.
Umtanum Ridge Water Gap is a geologic feature in Washington state in the United States. It includes the Yakima Canyon, and is located between the cities of Ellensburg and Yakima in central Washington. Washington State Route 821 was once the main route between Ellensburg and Yakima. The old highway still runs close to the river through the canyon, with Interstate 82 currently carrying most traffic between Ellensburg and Yakima on large bridges nearby.
The Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail is a network of routes connecting natural sites and facilities that provide interpretation of the geological consequences of the Glacial Lake Missoula floods of the last glacial period that occurred about 18,000 to 15,000 years ago. It includes sites in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. It was designated as the first National Geologic Trail in the United States in 2009.
Lake Condon was a temporary lake in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, formed periodically by the Missoula Floods from 15,000 to 13,000 BC. It was named after Oregon geologist Thomas Condon.
Badger Mountain is a small mountain in Richland, Washington. Badger rises above the Tri-Cities connected to the smaller Candy Mountain via Goose Gap, is visible throughout much of the area and is a popular hiking destination for a wide variety of climbers. There are a number of trails climbing the mountain with varying levels of difficulty. There are two summits on Badger Mountain, named the East Summit and the West Summit. The West Summit is the highest.
Sentinel Gap is a water gap formed by the Columbia River in the Saddle Mountains, near Mattawa in Washington state. The gap is "a water gap where erosion by the Columbia River was able to keep pace with folding, faulting and uplifting across the Saddle Mountain anticline". During Ice Age floods in which waters from the Channeled Scablands found passage to the Pacific Ocean here and at Wallula Gap, this opening was "repeatedly reamed out, which probably widened and steepened the walls of the gap". Strandlines from the floods can be seen on the basalt walls of the gap.
