April 14, 2003: A Day Trip to the Palouse to Look at Rock

Driving to the Palouse from Seattle is at least 250 miles. What the heck was I thinking?

A buddy of mine got interested in businesses that would get the crowd that goes to Seattle hostels out and about in the wilderness. He'd just returned from a trip to Australia and New Zealand and couldn't understand why this wasn't readily available up here. Well, it turns out there was such a business, but had been winding down as the owners got more interested in doing world travel. They met, they talked, and he's ramping up to run it for the summer. He chatted up his buddies to see who might be up for taking the WFR course necessarily to legally guide, and I cautiously said sure. In the meantime, it dawned on me that I might have to answer questions about flora, fauna and geology that would come up in the course of hikes to Little Si, the Olympic Peninsula, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier. And I'm the sort of person who tends to snooze off when people start talking about rock.

While looking for good natural history books to bring me back up to speed on trees, birds, butterflies, flowers and assorted other flora and fauna, I desperately looked for a book about Pacific Northwest Geology that wouldn't put me right to sleep. Fortunately, I found a few. Hill Williams' The Restless Northwest was an amazingly good primer (and arguably all one needs). While the Roadside Geology entry for Washington is a bit of a snoozer, it'll be useful as reference, and the Muellers' Fires, Faults and Floods, while not covering the ground quite as well as Williams, does an adequate job. Best of all, it is trip oriented.

And you should see pictures of Palouse Falls. Wow.

So I drove almost 250 miles to go look at falls in a part of the state that I normally regard as boringly dry, and found the state and county highways and roads to be remarkably well maintained and far better signed than the book led me to believe. I trekked around Juniper Dunes for a little while, and discovered that while walking on trails is significantly harder than walking similar terrain on paved sidewalks, walking across country without benefit of trail is, amazingly, that much worse as well. Of course, the terrain in question (sand dunes) is a bit dodgy.

There are some great rails-to-trails choices in the area, for those looking for a dead-easy biking experience. Bring a headlamp for the railroad tunnels. I didn't hike any of them, because it looks like it would be so much more fun wheeled. I also did not hike down to the river below Palouse Falls. Time was short, and the drive was long. I do, however, plan on going back.

Created: April 14, 2003
Updated: April 14, 2003