On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A Geological Field Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin [Paperback]

Bruce Bjornstad (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2006

During the last great Ice Age that ended some 15,000 years ago, the Pacific Northwest was repeatedly decimated by cataclysmic floods unlike anything of modern times. Giant ancient lakes such as Glacial Lake Missoula were created as lobes of the massive ice sheets blocked river valleys. These "ice dams" broke time and again over the millennia, sending walls of ice-laden water, miles wide and hundreds feet deep, racing over the land at speeds up to 80 mph – scouring a fantastic landscape and leaving a fascinating geologic record.

Now geologist Bruce Bjornstad has written the most comprehensive guide book yet to the incredible landforms scoured out by the Ice Age floods in the Mid-Columbia Basin. His new book, On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A geological field guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin explores the origins, timing and frequency of the Ice Age floods and describes each of 19 geologic features they left behind. It is also an exciting field guide to features, trails and tours in the Mid-Columbia Basin where we may witness today the awesome power of the ancient floods. The guide includes:

• Explanations of landforms created by the floods, from hanging coulees and giant gravel bars to ice-rafted "erratics" such as boulders carried on huge ice bergs and deposited hundreds of miles from their places of origin.
• Detailed descriptions of 70 distinct flood-formed features scattered throughout the basin, with driving directions to observation points
• 30 off-road hiking and biking trails where adventurers can walk and ride amid the flood geology.
• 5 driving tours and 2 aerial tours for day trips to view the scope of the landscape carved by the great floods.

Illustrated with more than 200 maps, schematics, photos and illustrations, including 16 pages of color plates, On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods provides a clear, concise and easily useable guide to the remarkable geologic record of the great Ice Age floods.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Bjornstad has captured all the important features that were crucial to Bretz's hypothesis and the great debate. -- Steve Reidel, Tri-City Herald, May 7, 2006

Rich in detail, this book is at once accessible, user-friendly and extremely well written. -- William D. Layman, Author of Native River and River of Memory: The Everlasting Columbia, March 2006

This marvelously illustrated guidebook will prove to be indispensable to both the casual outdoor enthusiast and to the serious student. -- Victor R. Baker, Ph.D., Regent’s Professor, Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, March 2006

About the Author

Bruce Bjornstad lives in Richland, Washington, and is a licensed geologist and hydrogeologist in Washington and Oregon and senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He earned a bachelor's degree in geology from the University of New Hampshire and a master's degree in geology from Eastern Wshington University. He has studied the Ice Age floods and explored every corner of the Northwest since 1980. An active member of the Ice Age Floods Institute, he regularly publishes and leads lectures and field trips on the Ice Age floods. His favorite activities are skiing, windsurfing, scuba diving and traveling to exotic places.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Keokee Books (May 1, 2006)
• ISBN-10: 1879628279
• ISBN-13: 978-1879628274
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terriffic guide to some of the most astounding geography in the United States, September 17, 2006

By 

Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A Geological Field Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin (Paperback)

When you fly from the Northeast or MidWest to Portland, Seattle or Spokaneand passed the Rocky Mountains, you may have looked down at what appears to be an almost lunar landscape. These are the scablands. Desolate landscape with deep coolees, buttes seemingly rising up from the middle of nowhere, what appear to be evenly space rolling ridges rising from the land.

In large part, this eery landscape is the result of single flood that took place about 13,000 - 15,000 years ago. Glacial Lake Missoula covered 3,000 square miles of present day Montana and was up to 2,000 feet deep. On occasion, the lake was dammed by glacier ice. And more than once, the waters of the lake overcame the ice and flooded into what is now called the Mid-Columbia Basin, creating the Channeled Scablands.

What floods these were. A wall of water hundreds of feet high. It is estimated that you could hear the flood waters 30 minutes away . . . that's a noise so loud and powerful that it could travel 350 miles in advance of the event. Water is estimated to have flowed at 1.7 million cubic meters per second or about 10 times the flow of all the rivers in the world combined.

Owing to the unique geography of eastern Washington and Oregon, deep channels were plowed in a matter of hours or days. Islands of basalt (volcanic rock) might remain standing. Boulders weighing hundreds of tons were swept along by the force of the water and deposited hundreds of miles from their origins.

Bruce Bjornstad is an excellent guide to this country. The first part of the book is about the history of the floods and its artifacts. The second half is a series of walking, bicycle, horse and auto tours of the region. He even includes one suggested aerial tour.

Bjornstad obviously loves this country and his narrative is very well informed, but never condescending or overly-technical. The book is well-illustrated, though color photos would have been a welcome addition.

For the tourist, this book is invaluable. Bjornstad's suggested tours make sure you will see every kind of different feature left behind by these floods. For the scientist, I suspect it will be useful. The general student of nature and the armchair will also find this book thoroughly enjoyable.

Jerry

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellence as far as it goes, May 24, 2008

By 

John Feesey "fees" (British Columbia,Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A Geological Field Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin (Paperback)

Concise,full of pertinent details. Full of selected references to other books websites groups and organizations.
If you flippped through this little tome at your local bookstore you might ask why the almost slavish attention to detail.The washed out halftone pictures that accompany the text might further hasten your rush to judgement.
In detailing the distances between such precise geology of the mid columbia, he leaves you free to do the ooohing and aaahing should you find yourself the visitor to this unbelievable place.
Nothing prepares you for the sheer visual scale of the floodlands.
Normally I am bored with an authors academic attention to such detail, but the elementality of the place, made purchase of this book compelling.

One star is missing....

The strength of the guide is its own weakness.To me, a studio-bound clay artist having a brief vacation, the mid columbia basin is Central Washinton.As one is on the trail of the ice age floods north into the fantastic Moses and Grand coulee system that to me seems to stretch ever North and east towards Spokane, one realizes with a start that we have half a book here.Bjornstad has sort of drawn a line in the basalt from roughly Wenatchee to Lewiston, north of which his guide is just is not there.. .
Back when I was a young buck and got critical in a review, some kind soul would point out to me publicly,how wrong I was. Is there an Ice Age Floods part 2 ?Please tell me there is!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just right for seeing it on the ground, March 31, 2009

By 

P. Ekstrom - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A Geological Field Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin (Paperback)

I grew up near the area treated by this guidebook, and later as an adult lived in the middle of it for a decade. I have read and enjoyed other flood books, including Alt's "Glacial Lake Missoula and its Humongous Floods", which I also recommend. But only now, going back there on a visit with this guidebook in hand, did I really begin to understand many details of the land I had been looking at all the time.

After an excellent introduction to the various types of ice-age floods, the various marks that they left, and some geological background to help interpret those marks, the author locates and describes dozens of specific sites. Each description includes how to get there, land ownership and access issues, cautionary information (no water, steep trail, etc.), a description of the feature usually including a picture, and a geological interpretation. Separate chapters then present trails through interesting areas, auto trips organized to access many sites efficiently in a day, and even a few routes for touring by small aircraft.

In limiting his treatment to a circumscribed area that he has studied, the author has kept the book manageable, both for him and for the reader. This does, however, leave out the most famous of the flood features; Dry Falls is mentioned, but it lies North of the area covered in detail. One wishes for more books like it to treat other portions of the floods' paths.

I have now read most of the sections, have done one easy trail with my grandchildren on a visit last weekend, and look forward to doing many more.