Washington to Oregon Trip: Summer 2024
Story and Photos by Lichen Forster
Sheep Rock, John Day, OR
Eight UH Hilo (UHH) geology students and two recent graduates participated in a ten day trip this summer, led by professors Steve Lundblad and Elisabeth Gallant.
The journey focused on places of geologic interest in Washington and Oregon, including Mount St. Helens, the John Day Fossil Beds, and Crater Lake. Several days of the trip were colored by wildfires, which impacted visibility and sometimes air quality.
2020 geology graduate Bjorn Buer hosted the crew near Bend, OR, for most of the trip. The geology club appreciates the Buer familys’ generosity!
In the famous 1980 eruption, trees were blasted off the slopes on and around Mount St Helens into Spirit Lake. 44 years later, many are still floating on its surface.
Mount St Helens emerges from wildfire smoke after midday. Using 'Brunton compasses', an expensive and versatile tool for geologists, students determined the orientation of trees in the 'blast zone' around the lake. Unsurprisingly, the trees had all been knocked over in the same direction.
View of Mt Rainier from Tipsoo Lake
The elusive Phantom Ship (can you see the sails?) is spotted in Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States and known globally for its pristine blue waters. Crater Lake was formed 7,700 years ago when a violent eruption caused the center of Mount Mazama to collapse. Today, the lake has an average depth of almost 2,000 feet and has incredible clarity of 102 feet down from the surface.
geology president Analeise Dilley
At the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center, students saw fossils collected in the John Day Fossil Beds; of mammals from the last 65 million years, as well as the ancestors of many modern trees like oak, maple, and beech. Students also got a backroom tour of the rooms where paleontologists at the center process new specimens collected from the fossil beds.
Three main materials exist at the flow: glassy obsidian, white pumice, and gray pumice. Pumice is the result of lots of gas leaving lava as it erupts, and cooling to something lighter. More gas escaped from white pumice before it cooled, making it less dense than gray pumice. Obsidian forms when a gasless lava cools very quickly, not allowing crystals to invade its structure.
The Big Obsidian Flow at Newberry Volcano covers 2.6 square kilometers and is the most recent eruptive activity from the shield volcano (1,300 years old.)
One of the fancier terms learned on this trip was elutriation pipe. They form when a lot of gas tries to escape a flow of pumice as it cools. What’s left is welded material more resistant to erosion. That’s why these elutriation pipes on Pinnacles Trail at Crater Lake appear today as pinnacles; as the softer material around it has eroded away, the welded parts have remained.
Mount Washington
South and Middle Sisters
At the Dee Wright Observatory in Willamette National Forest is a viewpoint of several volcanoes in the Cascade Range. As explained by signs at the observatory, the shape of these volcanoes can indicate something about their age. Earlier than 10,000 years ago, glaciers were carving out this landscape, giving the volcanoes in their path a more jagged shape. The volcanoes in this area younger than 10,000 years therefore have more rounded topography than the older ones.
Black Crater