Naturalist Trip - Columbia National Wildlife Refuge

Meet Thursday 9/28 at 7:30 at the Preston Park and Ride (directions will be provided). We will arrange car pooling there. 

Links to introductory videos on the ice age floods from Central Washington State University professor Nick Zentner will be provided for an overview of the floods before the trip proper.  I'm anticipating quite a range of familiarity with geology among participants and organize the presentations accordingly.

Day 1 - We will visit the informative Vistor Center at Dry Fall State Park for background on the Ice Age floods. We will then travel to the Drumheller-Odessa Basin. On the way we will stop off at the Lake Lenora Caves and Deep Lake Bench Potholes Swarm, and drive to viewpoints on Frenchman Hill and above the Drumheller Channels.

Day 2 - We will explore the Drumheller-Odessa Basin, visiting a series of features described in  Bruce Bjornstad’s ‘On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods’ book (Road Tour 2), including a hike of approximately 4 miles and ~200’ of elevation gain in the Drumheller Channels.  We'll try to piece together a picture of how the regional geography of the flood features is composed.

Camping is available at Potholes State Park on the west shore of Potholes Lake.  Reservations can be made at: https://washington.goingtocamp.com, though reservations aren't likely to be necessary at this time. Tent camping is at site numbers greater than 65 on the north section of the park.  There are two motels a twenty-minute ride to the south in Othello: Quality Inn and Othello Inn & Suites.