Mt. Jefferson – the stratovolcano in Oregon, not one of the others scattered across the country – is one of a dozen or so major volcanos that make up the crest of the Cascade Mountains. The volcanoes are part of the “Ring of Fire” that surrounds the Pacific Ocean. The lava, ash and other volcanics…
In geologic terms, the Pacific Plate, the gigantic tectonic plate underlying most of the Pacific Ocean today, is an arriviste. Just 180 million years ago, it didn’t exist. The Farallon Plate dominated the eastern Pacific Ocean. Today, the Farallon Plate is gone, shoved – subducted – under the North American Plate and mostly responsible for…
The Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) was the largest known volcanic event in the Western Hemisphere. Between 17–14 million years ago, in a series of four episodes, lava poured up and covered 81,000 square miles in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada in thick layers of basalt, as thick as 5,900 feet in some areas. Those voluminous…
When WC was a high school biology student, shortly before the end of the Pleistocene, science recognized three kingdoms of life: Protista, Plantae and Animalae (Protists, Plants and Animals). Cyanobacteria – popularly, if inaccurately, called blue-green algae – were regarded as members of the Plantae because they could photosynthesize. Today, depending on which biologist you…
Newberry Volcano, in central Oregon, first formed about 600,000 years ago and was built up by several thousand eruptions. By about 500,000 years ago, Mount Newberry had attained an elevation of about 14,000 feet (4,300 m), making it possibly the tallest mountain in Oregon. Mount Newberry was a composite volcano composed of thousands of layers of lava, ash…
WC and Mrs. WC recently spent a few days in Central Oregon. Geology and paddle-boarding were the primary focuses of the trip, not birding. But bird photos were taken because, of course, that’s what WC does. In July 2016, the Western Scrub-Jay was split into two species, the California Scrub-Jay and Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay. WC doesn’t…
WC didn’t just photograph rocks on that recent trip to Owhyee Reservoir. Although the birding was sketchy and spring birds hadn’t yet arrived, photos of birds (and porto-birds) were taken. Here’s quick sampler. We saw several pair of Killdeer, as you’d expect in an area with lots of gravel surfaces, parking lots and sandbars. They…
WC if off birding. Again. Internet access will be only intermittent. There may be delay in approving comments or responding to emails. There’s some very interesting geology in Oregon; unfortunately, it’s all buried under 2,000 feet of basalt. – Eldridge Moores Moores was being ironic when he said that to WC’s geology class in 1971.…
The etymology of the place name “Owhyee” is improbable. As it turns out, about a third of Donald MacKenzie‘s Snake Country Expeditions of 1819–1820 were native Hawaiians. “Owyhee” was then the standard spelling of the islands’ name, a proper spelling of the Hawaiian language name for the islands, hawai’i. The modern spelling then was otherwise unused. Three…
It’s been more than a month since Wickersham’s Conscience had a geology post. And while geology isn’t the most popular topic among WC’s readers, everyone needs a break from Brazilian birds, politics, impolitics and economics. Ick. “Tuff” is an igneous rock created by volcanic ash and tephra. In the Mountain West, almost all tuff is…
WC has written here before about the BUCIP1 that is the wild horse population in the West. WC and Mrs. WC recently spent some time in the South Steens Herd range and had a chance to seee what, if anything, had changed since our first visit in 2018. The answer? Not much. The South Steens…
WC didn’t visit Malheur National Wildlife Refuge this spring,; WC and Mrs. WC opted instead to do their spring birding at Summer Lake Wildlife Area, Malheur’s southwesterly neighbor. Instead, we delayed a trip to the Malheur area until the road up Steens Mountain would be open, after the first week of July. Here’s a brief…
WC has written about Steens Mountain before, but the photos were pretty awful; California wildfires had laid a thick blanket of smoke over the area, so dense that from the summit of the mountain you could not see the Alford Desert 5,500 feet below. So WC will re-visit that amazing place, this time with somewhat…
Leslie Gulch in east-central Oregon is a little-known geological wonder, a deeply dissected jumble of volcanic debris with jaw-dropping rock formations. For an amateur geologist, it’s also an irresistible puzzle. There are folks who criticize attempts to understand the geology of a scenic spot like Leslie Gulch, claiming it takes the wonder out of the…
WC and Mrs. WC visited Summer Lake Wild Life Refuge this spring instead of its bigger, better known federal cousin, Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. But our route back took us too close to Malheur not to spend a few hours in the Refuge. While the birds, especially at the headquarters, weren’t especially cooperative, the species…
WC recently spent a few delightful days birding in Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge, in southcentral Oregon. Because it all starts with geology, WC will start there, too. Multiple geology theses, a few books and hundreds of geology papers have been written on Summer Lake and its ancestor, Chewaucan (chee-WAU-can) Lake. WC is necessarily going to…
Imagine running one of the great American marathons. Or, if you are in the kind of shape I am in, imagine jogging, then walking, and in the end possibly crawling to the finish line of an American marathon. Whatever your condition, by the time you reach the finish line you’d be in dire need of…
During the Pleistocene, as recently as 12,000 years ago, central Oregon had a number of large lakes. One of them, Fossil Lake, located in south-central Oregon, in northern Lek County, was, at peak, about 30 miles wide and perhaps 250 feet deep. It’s vanished now. The last two ponds evaporated about 1877. But during the…
7,700 years go, give or take 1.5%, the 12,000 foot high stratovolcano Mt. Mazama catastrophically erupted, blasting so much ash and molten rock from its magma chamber that the whole edifice collapsed, creating an oblong caldera six miles long on the longer axis, four and a half on the shorter one, and nearly a mile…
Geology posts two days in a row? Is WC turning into some kind of sadist? Nope. At least no more than usual. Just the Magpie Principle in action. If you had stood on the Pacific shore about 190 million years ago – a seacoast then located near today’s Oregon-Idaho border – you might have seen…
It’s just a little over-hyped. Rome, Oregon – a country store in southeastern Oregon – is probably best known as a launch point for raft trips down the main stem of the Owyhee River. The place was named by William F. Stine for the nearby hoodoo formations that suggested to him the ruins of Rome, Italy. It’s a…
Strictly speaking, these photos aren’t from the Oregon Coast, but rather on the drive back from Crescent City, California to Boise, Idaho, WC’s adopted hometown. The drive back involved several birding stops: an overnight stop at Upper Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge, and a series of stops for May 8’s Global Birding Big Day across…
WC wants to make a moment to praise the joys of tide pooling. At low tide, peering into the rocky pools along the Pacific Coast is about as much fun as any would-be naturalist can have without getting into trouble with law enforcement. The sheer density of life in the hyper-oxygenated pools and rocks never…
Did you know there is a species of Asian babbler – the only babbler species in the New World – found solely on the western edge of North America? Neither did WC. Wrentits are a member of the family of birds called Sylviidae. The family includes the Old World sylviid warblers, parrotbills and their allied…
The Coastal Redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens, are the biggest trees on the planet, nearly the oldest and, at least for WC, the most awe-inspiring. There also nearly impossible to properly photograph, at least with the equipment WC carries. You can try standing at the base of the tree, with your widest angle lens, and photograph up…
The Southern Oregon Coast geology is a distinctly different beast than its more northerly neighbor. The southern coast is dominated by the Franciscan Melange. It’s the detritus scraped off the top of the subducting Juan de Fuca and Pacific Plates. Geologists call it an accretionary wedge or prism. It’s not a good place to be…
A few bird photos from May 2, 2021. The photos are from two areas just south of Coos Bay: Sunset Bay State Park and South Slough Marine Estuary. None of these photos are going to win any prizes, but WC promises you that they were immense fun to take. Processing them on WC’s somewhat aged…
Several readers took WC to task for his Lincoln City Syndrome post. The Oregon Coast, they said, is still beautiful, is still relatively undisturbed, is still a wonderful place to visit. WC, they said, is a cranky old man. Yes, but. The sea wrack is laced with plastic fragments. This is not healthy, normal or…
Most readers will have heard of the Oregon Flood Basalts, the series of volcanic events between 17 and 11 million years ago that covered much of Oregon and Washington, and a chunk of Idaho, under immense lava flows. What they may not know is that two of the lava flows actually ran all the way…
It’s a bit implausible: an English formal garden in the middle of a remote stretch of the Oregon coast, sandwiched between two state parks. But there it is, a meticulously restored and maintained formal garden, perched on top of a cliff over the North Pacific. The Gardens were part of the estate of Louis J.…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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