Customer Reviews

Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods

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This book is an extremely interesting study of the gigantic cataclysms caused when the ice dam holding back impounded glacier-melt waters in western Montana's Lake Missoula would periodically burst. The consequent outrushes repeatedly resculpted lands in northern Idaho, and eastern and central Washington, resulting in the curious, almost eerie, landforms covering much of that area today. Excellent photography amply demonstrates these effects.

Dr. Alt is a good writer, whose text carves a continuous, easily-followed thread that brings to life the events surrounding these floods, and their effects. His enthusiasm is contagious.

This book should not be read alone, but in conjuction with the book, "Cataclysms on the Columbia", written earlier. Any tourist going to the Northwest, and certainly natives of that wonderful region, will enjoy both books, and gain a valuable, lasting impression of this most peculiar part of the Earth. Each book will give directions to the most spectacular phenomena as well. I highly recommend each, but again suggest both should be read in conjunction.

My knowledge of geology is so incomplete that I don't even qualify as an amateur. However, I live in Missoula, Montana, and from my window can see beach lines left by the several fillings of Lake Missoula. I have listened to David Alt, the author of this book, describe the geologic events of ten to fifteen thousand years ago. In geologic time, that is very recent. Possibly the lake and floods were seen by humans. What a sight that would have been!

My wife and I have carried this book, and the roadside geology books written or coauthored by David Alt, as we drove through Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. These are the four states involved in the lake and floods. We have compared the many photos and sketches of the book with the actual physical features. Until recently, these books were the only sources of information written in layman's language.

In a nutshell, a huge lake formed behind a dam of glacial ice at the border of Idaho and Montana. It was 2000 feet deep at the dam, 900 feet deep at Missoula, and stretched more than a hundred miles up several valleys. The dam washed out and in less than a week, there were huge floods across Washington and out the Columbia River Gorge to the Pacific. Flood waters backed far up river valleys such as the Yakima and the Willamette. The dam reformed and the event was repeated forty times or more. The floods left behind physical features that match the scope of the event. There are huge silt deposits, giant ripple marks, enormous erratic boulders moved hundreds of miles, and immense rock surfaces scoured by the flooding waters. The great valleys and waterfalls left behind now stand dry. This book tells all; or at least as much as geologists understood in 2001 when the book was published.

A fascinating side story found in the book is about J. Harlen Bretz, the redoubtable geologist who correctly interpreted the evidence of the flood and fought the geologic world to a standstill. He was booed when presenting his theories in national geologic meetings. However, he lived to see most of his detractors either change their viewpoints or go to their graves unconvinced. Today, there is an organization that has gotten Congressional approval to establish an informative "trail" through the four states. It would inform travelers about the geology. There are already signs along the roads and displays in museums. Much of the success is attributable to David Alt and his book "Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods."

If the idea of catastrophic glacial floods and their still-visible effects on vast reaches of Eastern Washington's geology and topography fascinates you, I haven't found a better book for building a perspective of the whole process.

This is particularly true if you are not a trained geologist: Mr. Alt lays a foundation that illustrates the conditions that led to the mega-floods, then follows the evidence that the floodwaters left upon various watercourses on their way to the ocean.

Mr. Alt presents it all in terms a layperson can understand and use in exploring a series of disasters writ large upon the land.

A flow of water greater than that of all the rivers of the world- combined, measured in cubic *miles* of water/hour. A waterfall three miles wide, five times the width of Niagara. Water 1,000 feet high, coming down to a measly 500 feet by the time the roaring torrent reached Portland. These are but a few of the stories of earth and water you'll be entertained with in this book.

While this book will only be of interest to those fascinated by alluvial geology or geology of the Northwest, for that select few, the book is a must have. Thus it is helpful to have a minimal background in geology in order to fully appreciate the book. David Alt provides more than you'd ever want to know about Lake Missoula and it's aftereffects, scouring the lands of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. As a result the flood left it's mark on Eastern Washington, creating the endemic Channeled Scablands, a geology found nowhere else on Earth (though there is a good possibility for similarities on Mars). I read this in preparation for my trip to the Scablands and Dry Falls, and I now feel adequately prepared to fully appreciate the enormity of the geology before me. Nowhere else is the entire story in one place.

Beneath the primary characters of Lake, Flood, Glacier, and Basalt, there is an interesting subplot involving those short-lived humans, principly J Bretz, who first proposed the existence of gigantic catastrophic floods in the Northwest, much to the dismay of his colleagues. At a time when catastrophism was denied, and only gradualism allowed, Bretz's proposals were, as Alt states, pure heresy. And in the midst of this is a cautionary tale for those on both sides of scientific controversies today.

Many of Bretz's colleagues didn't like the idea of a giant catastrophic flood because it smacked a little too much of The Flood- the one with Noah and Genesis. This was a form of thinking that scientists have worked too long to demonstrate there was no evidence for. Scientists had worked too long to insist that we believe events only when there's evidence for their existence. Then lesson from the Missoula Flood controversy is the temptation to reject scientific evidence, just because it may support ideas that are held by a particularly religious persuasion. On the other side, Bretz had all of the evidence, and the geologists of his day refused to see it. They were too ingrained in their ways and beliefs. And thus there is a reminder to Literal Creationists and followers of Intelligent Design, that beliefs don't make the argument: science dictates the trashing of those beliefs- no matter how sacrosanct- when the evidence becomes overwhelming. And clearly this evidence was a proverbial torrent.

This was the most readable/believable presentation yet. It was easy to follow all the way to the Pacific Ocean. A suggestion: have detailed area maps handy. You will use them...

David Alt, like no other geologist I know of, can take technical, complex, and controversial geological history and write it in a way that is engaging and enjoyable by the average reader. To truly enjoy his books, though, I think you have to have an interest and either a familiarity or be visiting the areas he is talking about (Eastern Washington, especially the area between Vantage and Grand Coulee Dam near Moses Coulee, Grand Coulee, Ephrata, etc.). In this book he takes the reader through the history of the giant floods caused by ice dams breaking during the last ice age and letting unbelievable amounts of water cascade through Eastern Washington forming a unique landscape of coulees and scablands. Quickly you see the clear evidence for this flood and realize how unique this area is. It is a book to help you appreciate the details.

This is a great book to take along during a drive, camping trip, or boat trip in Eastern Washington and to read perhaps while watching your fishing pole on one of the Sun Lakes. David Alt in this book, like all of his books, takes the reader through the story with ample illustrations, maps, and photos to not only help you understand what happened but why and how it relates to other geology in the area. It is a great addition to his more general book on Pacific Northwest geology Northwest Exposures: A Geologic Study of the Northwest. On the other hand, if you are looking for a more human story of J Harlen Bretz, the geologist who took a lifetime to convince the geology community that catastrophic floods caused this landscape, you might check out Bretz's Flood: The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood. Or read both and be the guy who really "knows the landscape" when you are wakeboarding at Crescent Bar.

I picked up this book while touring the visitor's center at the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State, on the way home from camping in the Canadian Rockies. In spite of having grown up in Washington State, I'd never seen the Grand Coulee before, and thought it was about time. Besides, the kids thought it would be a treat.

The Grand Coulee dam sits in a wide, deep channel, or coulee, in the Eastern Washington basalt. David Alt's book is relevant because it explains (among lots of other things) where the coulee (and others like it) originated. The story begins with early settlers, who wondered at the scab lands in the area, and their contrast with the rich soils of the Palouse Hills. Some of these scab lands show stream beds much too wide to support current flows, and scouring as much as several hundred feet above the current channels. There are also potholes in the coulees, very numerous, and some of gigantic proportions. Further north, in Montana, there are the unmistakable horizontal lines of ancient lake shores, high on the hills and mountains of river valleys.

These and other clues led early geologists to wonder and speculate about ancient glacial lakes during the last ice age. T. C. Chamberlain was one of these, as was Joseph Pardee, who actually calculated the volume of water in what is now called Glacial Lake Missoula. The numbers are impressive. The lake held roughly 500 cubic miles of water, was nearly 2000 feet deep, and covered an area of roughly 2,900 square miles.

The problem was, it was all held back by an ice dam, an ice finger, actually, from one of the glaciers that moved down from Canada during the last ice age. And when the water in the lake became deep enough to float the ice dam, it gave way, resulting in a tremendous rush of water out of the lake that sloshed its way, making temporary lakes as it went, all the way to the Pacific ocean.

Along the way, this great flood formed many of the features we see in Montana, the Idaho panhandle, Easter Washington, the Columbia Gorge, and the lower Columbia. Alt has structured his book so that he takes the reader on a voyage from the lake's beginnings in Montana through the river valleys the flood scoured. Along the way he explains how the floods resulted in landmarks easily visible from interstate highways, including such features as Coeur d'Alane Lake in Idaho, the scablands and coulees of Eastern Washington, the Columbia River Gorge, and Lake Oswego in Oregon.

The book is nicely illustrated, with lots of black-and-white photographs of geological features as well as useful maps. The story, for the most part, is sequential, and follows the events of the flood from the moment the ice dam broke. An important point, though, is that there were many such floods. Perhaps three dozen or more. This cyclic behavior resulted from the creeping ice: as soon as the ice dam washed out, the glacial ice, continuing it's plodding movement, would begin damming the river again, and the process would repeat.

Alt's purpose in writing the book is to both tell the story of geological events, as well as to illustrate how scientists grapple "with an emerging scientific controversy." As he points out, "[S]ome handle it well, others miserably as personalities, pride, and outright prejudice supercede scientific evidence. While I found some of these stories interesting, for me they were a little distracting, particularly when Alt takes the apparent point of view that earlier scientists who did not readily accept the "monster-flood theory" were somehow bad scientists.

For example, Alt states on page 21:

"When J. Harlen Bretz first proposed his great flood, he could not say where the water had come from. He pointed to the enormous expanse of glaciated country to the north and vaguely suggested that the water had come from somewhere up there, somehow. Perhaps a brief interlude of much warmer weather melted an enormous amount of ice. Maybe a volcano erupted beneath the ice. It was a puzzle. People need not understand everything they know. It is perfectly proper in scientific discussions to recognize that a phenomenon exists without being able to explain it."

In hind site it's easy to criticize people for not "believing." But Alt does a disservice, I think, with his implications that such criticisms were somehow unfair. No doubt there were personal conflicts and bad manners, but overall, my perception is that the scientific community was pretty prompt about accepting the new theory once the evidence was presented. And, certainly, the cause of science is not advanced by accepting uncritically ideas for which only ad hoc explanations about "where all the water came from" are advanced. One need only review the circumstances surrounding the fiasco of "cold fusion" to understand the value in the scientific method of "believing" after the facts are established, and not before.

Philosophical issues aside, I really enjoyed this book. It's part of a class of books aimed at the intelligent arm-chair scientist (but of interest, I believe, to "real" scientists, as well) in which a particular geological micro-history is traced through thousands of years. For me, personally, this was a fun book. I enjoy geology, and I especially enjoy such books that take a particular historical event in geology and explain it in detail. It's the sort of book I can easily read while camping, or in the evening, at home. I highly recommend it.

Geologist Bretz first walked the dry channels of Eastern Washington in the 1920s and observed a landscape which told of a catastrophic flood released repeatedly which held more than ten times the combined flow of all the modern rivers of the world. Glacial Lake Missoula And Its Humongous Floods reveals the geology and research involved in tracing the paths of these floodwaters. Any with an interest in geology in general and Missoula in particular will find this fascinating reading.

I've read this book five times and plan to read it again and again. It's dog-eared from the reads and the miles of packing and driving as I explore the fantastic Washington geological scenes described within. Very well written -- makes for a very easy read.

After most of a lifetime exploring this state, I'm still blown away at the features exposed to all of us everyday in such a relatively small area, and when you consider the processes and dynamics (as in this book) that created what we see today - well, its mind-boggling.

Nature is definitely in-charge; standby for the excitement when the next ice-age starts....and it will.

There've been plenty of books on how the west was won, this is the best on how the northwest was formed. Modern geology's understanding of recent post glacial events is very interesting for the casual non-fiction reader. Well done Professor Alt.