Location Taken: Oregon
Time Taken: June 2010
It’s rare for me to not be able to place a photo even years after I took it. Even if I don’t recall it just using my amazing map memory powers, I can usually figure it out based on the photos around it. This one, though, is between an on-the-road photo and the first of my Multnomah Falls photos. Based on the fact that there’s a river/lake, there’s a good chance this is near Multnomah Falls, or at least somewhere along the Columbia River gorge. It’s too narrow to be the Columbia itself, but there were some small lakes along that road on the other side from the river.
The rocks look right for that region, if nothing else.
That’s solidly the hard igneous rocks that make up the mountain ridge the Columbia River cuts through near Mt. Hood. You see that section of extra-rough rock right where the waterfall starts falling down the cliff? If you look closely you’ll see that it’s a bunch of vertical columns, though many of then have partway fallen off the rock face.
Those are basalt columns, just like the ones you find at Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. That’s one of the few rocks that will break apart into these regular hexagonal columns if it cools at the right rate and whatnot. And really, for a geologically minded artist like me, these things are awesome to spot. Just the contrast between the vertical stripes of the columns and the flat faces of the rest of the rock is fascinating.
And just look at that marvelous V-shaped valley this small waterfall has carved! This stream’s been working on this rock face for quite a long time, chiseling further and further downwards with every drop of water!
And of course the lovely sheer cliff faces, can’t forget about them! If this is the Columbia Gorge, they were carved by a series of massive floods of water as the glaciers moved and formed gigantic temporary lakes and then released them, again and again. It’s always so fascinating to think about, flooding on an epic scale that not even the movies really manage! Ah, the joys of geology!
