Palouse Falls roaring with flood-stage waters

HIKING — Palouse Falls State Park was in top form Saturday for the geology hike led by the Ice Age Floods Institute .  And the big water that’s been roaring over the 185-foot falls is going to get even bigger as flood risk warnings are being issued for the Palouse River today.

Here’ a trip report from Barb Brock on the IAFI hike, which focus a lot of attention on the Ice Age Floods that scoured the region with flows thousands of times greater than the Palouse River.

Fabulous 8-mile hike with the Ice Age Floods group from Cheney on Saturday. I had no idea Portland was under 400 feet of water and Lake Missoula was 50 CUBIC MILES in volume! When the ice dam burst on the lake about 15,000 years ago, the several hundred foot wall of water took a couple of days to spread across the northwest…leaving a changed landscape, the Palouse Falls (pictured), and Dry Falls in its wake, and transplanting our topsoil to the wine country in Oregon. Cheney was right in the middle of it…WOW!