My first view of Mt. Rainier out the window on New Year's Day was quite colorful, but the high-order rainbow effect of alternating pinks and greens was due to refraction, from shooting sideways through the Bombadier Q400's window toward the front of the plane.
I waited until Rainier moved fully into view for the next shot:
Photo looking almost due east.
The high peak on the left is Liberty Cap, at 14,112 feet (4301 m); the peak on the right is Point Success, at 14,158 feet (4315 m). The high point of the entire mountain, in the center and back behind the other two, is Columbia Crest, coming in at 14,411 feet (4392 m).
In the view above, we're looking at the head of the South Fork of the Mowich River just left of center in the foreground. The small ice field above and left of the river head is Edmunds Glacier. The shadowed icy mass to the left of Edmunds is the North Mowich Glacier, which is above the North Fork of the Mowich River (mostly out of view).
A radial dike runs from between the two closer and less elevated peaks to the lower right, into what is the headwaters of the North Puyallup River. The landform formed by the radial dike is known as Puyallup Cleaver.
Photo looking a little east of northeast.
Here we're looking almost straight up the andesitic dike that forms Puyallup Cleaver. This dike fed lavas that erupted between 280 and 190 ka (Pringle, 2008). The Puyallup Glacier is to the left (north) of the dike; the Tahoma Glacier is to the right (south). The steep headwall above Puyallup Glacier is called Sunset Ampitheater. Ice in Sunset Ampitheater spills (or flows) into both the Puyallup and the North Mowich Glaciers.
I was on the wrong side of the plane to see Mt. St. Helens, but had this great view of Mt. Adams as the sun went down and the light got pink. Notice the reddish irridescentlenticular cloud off to the side.
Mt. Adams looking almost due east.
Too bad I hadn't thought about my new camera on the Alaska-SeaTac leg of the flight! For some reason, I didn't think about it, and hence only got some not-so-great phone photos.
There I was minding my own business while flying north from RNO to SEA (that is to say, I was reading a thick book and trying to ignore a seatmate while crammed against the window near the rear of a Q400), when I looked out (to the east) and spotted the peak of an Oregon volcano sticking out through what I first thought was a low, thick cloud cover. I grabbed a few quick shots through a badly spotted and smeared window, while rapidly revising my reckoning about the cloud bank: no clouds, just a very dense blanket of smoke.
Whereas I first estimated I was somewhere over central Oregon south of Sisters or Bend, it soon became apparent that I was probably a little farther north than I thought — and it turns out I was between Sisters and Portland looking at Mt. Jefferson (first photo).
Mt. Hood
The photo above shows Mt. Hood barely sticking up above the dense smoke bank. Hard to say exactly, but it looks like the smoke is about 10,000 feet thick! Hood's peak sits at an elevation of 11,240 feet, and its south shoulder sits at somewhat above 10,400 or 10,600 feet (depending on what part of the shoulder we're actually looking at); the Portland outliers of Troutdale and Springdale in the foreground have elevations of about 100 feet and 300 feet, respectively. As a geographical point of interest, the larger, streamlined island on the north side of the wide Columbia River is Reed Island. The river beyond the island fades gradually and then disappears abruptly in the distance.
Mt. St. Helens
My first view of Mt. St. Helens was of what I call the back side (the south side). It's clearly not an ordinary Cascade volcano by today's standard of nice, symmetrical peaks, although several Cascade volcanoes are known to have created lateral blasts like the one St. Helens produced in May, 1980 — and maybe all or most have done something like that sometime in the past.
Mt. St. Helens
This second shot of Mt. St. Helens (above) shows the South Fork of the Toutle River in the foreground and Spirit Lake in the background.
Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams
Mt. Adams can be seen in the distance, barely sticking up above the smoke, even though it reaches an elevation of 12,277 feet!
North Fork Toutle River
This view of the Toutle River (Google Maps location) shows an area just above the Toutle River Sediment Retention Structure. The berg of St. Helens sits across from a green, tear-dropped-shaped "island" that is marked as hill 11227 on some topographic maps (e.g. this one at the USGS TNM 2.0 Viewer).
Smoke amid the low hills between Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Ranier
One last look at Mt. St. Helens
Mt. Ranier
Mt. Ranier, the tallest Cascade volcano at an elevation of 14,410 feet, rises above the smoke more than any of the others. The clouds obscuring its peak make it appear to be erupting (it wasn't).
A last view of Mt. Ranier, seen as the airplane descended toward SeaTac.
Smoky wisps interfinger with some low hills north of the airport after take off several hours later.
Photos taken 26August15 between 10:13am and 4:59 pm, PDT.
So, I met with Dana Hunter, the prolific and excellent writer, who not only has ONE, TWO (count 'em) blogs at two distinct blog networks (Freethought Blogs and the SciAm blog network), but is also (rumor has it) writing other stories, books, and — we hope — field guides (like those in this awesome series).
I met her at the usual place (usual for us, so far): the area outside security at the SeaTac airport. We had our usual drinks (see this post about our first meeting), and we ate a lunch of sandwich and salad. We talked and gabbed and had a great old time for a few/couple hours (whichever it was: time flew past rapidly, much faster than the Horizon turboprop I boarded after our meeting).
Anyway, things we discussed? Everything from A (Alaska) to E (her newish Etsy: Dana Hunter's Gneiss Schist) to F (field trips: field trips past and field trips future) to G (geology — yes, what else would geo-types like us hone in on) to K (Kittehs and Geokittehs) to N (networks: blog networks such as SciAm and FTB in particular) to P (phones: types, providers, and plans) to W (writing: blog writing and other writing) to...
...yes, there was more here, more that was somehow lost by the offline Blogger app I was using to block this post out while flying between Seattle and Reno...
We also discussed, at least briefly, geobloggers, geoblogging, and geological locations (at least from Washington to Nevada, and at least briefly between other topics) — and also a few other things that didn't necessarily take us all the way to the Z of the alphabet, but included South Africa, Mt. St. Helens, travel, wireless networks — oh, did I already mention that? We talked about scribbles (mine), focus (how it can be hard to accomplish at least for me), and cats (hers, because I don't have any and haven't for many years). Also, holidays and family (a little, and possibly mostly mine) — and what else?
...to Z for Zinfandel (no, really, we didn't make it to Z!).
Inevitably it was time for me to go stand in the non-Pre security line, for the second (and thankfully final) time that day. We hugged for the second time — and went onward toward 2015.
"I'm by the ak ticket counters. See you there!" This text message was awaiting me while I was still on the plane — the return flight from my Xmas trip to Alaska — immediately after landing in Seattle. Excitement much? Yes!
"Not quite at the N gates, so will be a few minutes!" Darn, the plane hadn't yet pulled into one of the North Terminal gates, so I was in an immobile plane, stuck with all the other passengers, waiting. Finally a gate opened up and we pulled in. Then, there was the long trek to the interterminal train, the ride on the train, a hike through the main terminal because I got off at the first stop, and a walk out past security to the old main part of the terminal, to the ticket counter. I was practically running!
And there she was: Dana Hunter of En Tequila Es Verdad! I recognized her right away. I was starving, having not bought any breakfast on the plane, so we went to the first little bar-diner, ordered lunch with wine and beer. And we talked. And talked. After a while we moved to another little bar-diner, a darker one, and that's when we took each other's picture. The second place was dark, so my photos, except for this first one, turned out a little blurry. Dana, who was going to have to drive away from the airport, had switched to coke. I stuck with the Alaskan Amber, which seemed rather sweet after drinking mostly Alaskan IPA while in Alaska. The amber is proof of my presence at the blogger meetup (as are the pictures I took). Too bad we didn't get pictures at the first place we stopped, but we were too busy talking — about sci-fi, geology, blogging & writing, cats & chickens, work, life, and pennyroyal tea. Maybe we'll get more time at our next meetup, which will hopefully be a geology field trip.
While sitting at the empty table beyond the closest or largest "Alaska" sign in an unnamed bar at the SeaTac airport ... ...and after eating this early lunch with Pike IPA ... ... I had a fine phone forum with Dana Hunter of En Tequila Es Verdad fame (True Fame, really) — and we decided that we would definitely meet sometime in the future. Here's to ya, Dana! :)
I was often asked this question, especially in my early years as a geologist — the question was usually asked by strangers, mostly men, who I had just run into out in the field: prospectors and would-be prospectors, landowners, ranchers, and even other geologists. Really, you'd think people could be a little more inventive than to reuse that worn phrase so many times. The question seemed to imply some kind of wrongness in my choice of careers, and some other kind of wrongness that I'd managed to meet them out in the field — a "field" where I presumably didn't belong.
I've run into that question from Yuma to Gabbs, from Hog Ranch to Okanogan, and from Juneau to Fairbanks, and I wondered at the question every time it was asked. (The song Tucson to Tucumcari seems to be a most applicable song: my exploration travels have taken me, on legitimate business, to the places in the song: Tucson, Tucumcari, Tehachapi, and Tonopah.) I usually stuck to my routine answer, "My dad was a geologist," an answer that made sense and explained everything, at least it did for all those who asked the question. It didn't really explain things to me, nor did it tell the curious or suspicious questioners much about me.
The Making of a Geologist: I'd like to say that it all started on Highway 8A, in Nevada, but it didn't. Nor, I suppose, will it end there, although it could. It all really started before I was born.
I was conceived and born while my dad was in grad school continuing his studies as a geologist at UO. Upon my birth, we moved almost immediately to central California, where I grew up with the foothills of the Sierra Nevada as my backyard playground, and with the northern Sierra Nevada towering above me. In those days, you could see the Sierra from Sacramento, you could see Half Dome from the Central Valley (you stillcan, just not routinely), and you could see Mt. Shasta from a bridge on Highway 40, now I-80, the road to San Francisco (at least, that's the way I remember it).
I began life downstream from the headwaters of the McKenzie River of the southern Cascades, where I was like a little geologic formation myself, filling in the lowlands of a wide valley. The deposition and formation of my early life continued after my parents moved to another vast lowland: the Great Valley of California. Sediments formerly and actively depositing from seas or rivers, and rivers meandering and flowing between levee walls to the delta and into the bay, were all a part of this early life of mine — a life buttressed by the strength and continuity of the granite of the Sierra Nevada batholith, which formed the backbone of my early life.
While I was growing up in this serene and stable-looking area, my dad was at work as a geologist (the area, which is not far from where faults of the San Andreas fault system run through the San Francisco Bay Area, is far from geologically serene or stable, as many of you know). We routinely traveled from there into the McKenzie River and Willamette Valleys, up and over the crest of the Cascade Mountains, and up and down the Oregon coast; we meandered around the Sierra Nevada foothills, into the Sierra Nevada, to Yosemite and Lake Tahoe; and we made these traverses during all the seasons of the year.
The Carlin Unconformity, with old Highway 40 and the Humboldt River meandering past.
Roadcuts were magnets to my father, so we stopped and looked at them any time we went out for a drive. We collected rocks everywhere we went, and we went to lots of places. By the time I was five, I had seen the famous unconformity in Carlin Canyon, NV, and I had collected slate from eastern Nevada, granite from the Sierra, andesite from the foothills, asbestos from northern California, and agate from Oregon.
It probably also helped that I have rock collectors on my mother's side of the family, and that I grew up inspecting (and adding to) their collections of agate, geodes, barite roses, and other seashore and desert goodies. All these connections, collections, and early explorations combined might be enough to make a geologist out of anyone, but my brother, less than three years younger than I, who remembers much of this time period, did not become a geologist.
What truly did it, I think — what made me into a geologist, that is — was that I was born with a North Arrow in my head: you know, the kind of north arrow you find on any good map, one that continually and consistently points north. I guess that's a little like asserting that I was born with little magnetite or iron oxide pieces in my brain, so I can navigate the way geese or other birds supposedly do. Anyway, as far back as I can remember (possibly back to 1 or 1.5 years old), all my memories come with accurate north arrows engraved on them: that window faced east, that bed faced north, that street ran east-west, and you turned south into that driveway.
It's possible that later knowledge and directional orientation (when did it start?) has superposed North Arrows on my old memories, but maybe not: the arrows hold true for houses I was in when I was ≤1 years old, ≤1 to 4.5 years old, 4.5 to 5 years old, 5 to 6 years old, and so on. I have only revisited one or two of the early houses as an adult, and two of the early houses I have not revisited at all. For the latter two houses, my North Arrow memories check out with the house-detail memory of my mother ("Well, after you came in the front door, the master bedroom was immediately to the left...") along with the directional memory of my dad (who doesn't remember where the rooms of the houses were but does know that the front door faced east).
My dad was also born with a built-in North Arrow, as far as I can figure out, and consequently has been turned-around only once in his life. (I've been lost or turned-around three times that I can remember: once in fog, once in a dense forest, and once in fog in nearly impenetrable brush.) My natural directionality and 3-dimensional thinking (the latter is a requirement to be a geologist and the former is highly recommended) were both reinforced every time we, as a family, traveled anywhere or stopped at any roadcut. Probably the words north, south, east, and west were in my vocabulary by the time I was three, along with the words rock hammer and roadcut, so it remains a little difficult to pull out the built-in part from the added-to-later part — but the built-in part was there, of that I am sure.
That, anyway, is one way to make a geologist, although I'm sure there are other ways. One thing that geologists are sure of is the existence and viability of other ways — this idea is technically referred to as "multiple working hypotheses," and it's sometimes overstated as, "if ten geologists mapped the same area, you'd end up with at least ten different maps."
This story may be continued in another form later...
Thirty years ago today, Mt. St. Helens erupted, blowing away it's almost perfectly formed Cascade volcano cone in a large lateral blast to the north, felling trees with the blast and with a resulting pyroclastic surge or flow, sending an ash column 19 km into the atmosphere, and sending debris avalanches, lahars, and mudflows into the Toutle River and others. A map of the devastation area can be seen here.
USGS Photograph taken on May 18, 1980, by Austin Post.
For an exhaustive supply of before, during, and after May 1980 photos of Mt. St. Helens, go to this page of the CVO Website; Ron Schott, of Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog, has an August, 2009 Gigapan of Mt. St. Helens right here.
Two things immediately happened in my world upon the climactic eruption of Mt. St. Helens. First, my SO (at the time called "POSSLQ") — later husband, later deceased husband — immediately left for eastern Washington to make an ash-sampling traverse across the state using his VW bug, a field vehicle that was impervious to ash fallout because of its oil-based air filtration system.
USGS Photo courtesy of Washington State Department of Transportation, 1980.
Second, the district manager at Northern Exploration Comapny (NEC) released two company Broncos so we could, on our own time and dollar, drive to the volcano.
All told, there were eight of us: a couple permanent geos and a half dozen contracts types.1 We were young, all of us in our late twenties to maybe early thirties, and we were ready for adventure, or would be as soon as we could get out of the office. After grabbing some topo maps and the keys to the two Broncos — one mine, the other belonging to our pfearless leader [sic] — we loaded up some company camping gear: a large, manager-type tent that would sleep more than eight comfortably, and whatever else hadn't already been "64NZ3D" [this "word" is based on someone's real name] appropriated by a certain outlaw geologist.
We piled in and headed north. Mt. St Helens had just blown, the company was providing the means for us to go check it out, we were excited at the prospect of the trip.
North from Reno we went, stopping in Lakeview, Oregon, to fill the Broncos with many six-packs of relatively cheap beer (think: Bud, Bud Lite). We drove up the back side of the Cascade (that would be the east side for those of you not familiar with local terminology), stopping briefly at Mt. Hood. We camped, and awoke the next day under cloudy skies.
On that cloudy second day, a couple or three days after the eruption, we continued what would be a mostly overcast field trip by crossing the Columbia River, probably on I-5. We thought we'd attempt secretive, backroad entrance to the volcano from the southeast side, which was away from the blast zone, and which we figured (incorrectly) would be less heavily guarded. Those Forest Service and other roads in to the mountain were all blocked off — though with our topo maps and the first Bronco driver as acting leader, we drove up every road shown. Each road was blocked by manned barricades — the USFS (or others?) didn't want any people going in only to have to be rescued or worse. "But we're geologists!"
Nothing we tried worked, and we hadn't attempted getting in through USGS and university contacts (and I'm not sure those contacts could have helped anyway). Still, we kept attacking the problem, painstakingly checking out each and every road on our maps, however small or jeepish they appeared to be.
Finally! We found an unblocked road! We drove in, expecting to hit a barricade, literally, at any second. After winding our way through fairly dense trees, the dirt road turned back to the south, and — typical field experience — we came up on the wrong side of one of the roadblocks!
"Where are you coming from?" "How did you get in here?" We had to explain that we came in on a road they hadn't closed off. Displeased with us, and having already seen us drive up to the south side of their blockade less than an hour beforehand, they moved the orange and white contraption aside and let us through, with a warning: don't try that again.
We were disappointed not to get in farther, but pleased that we'd managed to crash the gates, even if only for a mile or two.
We gave up on the southeast non-entrance attempt, and drove over to the west side of Mt. St. Helens, thinking that we could at least get a look at her blown top from a distance. No luck! She was still hidden by clouds. The access roads in from that side brought us a little closer, but they never delivered us a view of the volcano. Instead, we found our way up the Toutle River. We talked to a couple local landowners who had experienced some mud-flood damage, drove around a bit, and took a few photos.
USGS Photograph of I-5 bridge (below) taken on July 6, 1980, by Lyn Topinka. Other I-5 bridge photos with people and stop sign (above) taken May 21±, 1980 by DMCS.
After the day's excursion, we drove south into Oregon, picked a campsite, drank some beer while hanging around the campfire in the off-and-on light drizzle, and in the morning — with the weather and views not looking any better — we drove back to Lakeview to turn in our empties for the highest can deposit around (Oregon), thus saving a few bucks.
It was a rowdy, fun, good time — with singing, drinking, and story telling — but all we saw was a muddy, lahar-flooded river, a few washed out roads, drizzle, and lots of barricades.
1Contract geos at NEC fell somewhere between temporary help and permanent geos in status, longevity, and benefits. Contracts were unrelated to consulting; they usually lasted one year and were renewable. We wouldn't see all the benefits unless they kept us on through a five-year vesting period, which didn't happen unless you were promoted to permanent status.
A view of Mt. St. Helens, looking to the northeast, with Spirit Lake to the left.
Back in early November, BrianR of Clastic Detritus won the Where in the West contest that you can sometimes find here on this blog. I didn't get around to posting a second look at the mountains in question, which were Mt. Rainier in the distance, and Mt. St. Helens in the foreground. So here are a couple more pictures of Mt. St. Helens, which as many people know or remember, erupted with a bang on May 18, 1980. Above, a somewhat mysterious view of Mt. St. Helens, looking almost due east, with the Toutle River in the foreground and on the left side of the photo.
A close-up photo of a portion of the Toutle River.
Better photos of Mt. St. Helens can be found by rummaging through the Mt. St. Helens links above, and from derivative links therein which will include this YouTube "video", and also see this Geotripper post by MJC Rocks (along with a couple photos of Mt. Rainier).
It's been a while since I've done this - not since August as a matter of fact. September and October were just too busy, apparently!
Here are two famous mountains as seen from some kind of flying machine. One was snow-covered at the time of this photo; one has just a tad of snow. If you can identify one mountain, you can identify the other! That's not really a clue, it's just the truth. You can enlarge the photo if you'd like - it's a bit grainy but otherwise okay.
