As required for Earthcache listings, incomplete logs will be deleted. In the case of this cache, with no notice. An incomplete log is one that does not include an e-mail or message to me with the answers to the questions below within 48 hours of the date on your on-line log.
At the end of the 48 hours, your log will be deleted with NO warning.
Update--9/2/19:
NO multiple cachers messages will be accepted. Each cacher claiming a find MUST send their own message. Any logs based on a multiple cacher message will be deleted as soon as I see it. The 48 hour time limit does not apply to this restriction.
Over 10,000 years ago, a glacier began to recede from the areas that became the Puget Sound and the Columbia Basin. As the glacier retreated, one of the things it left behind was this boulder. After 4,000 years, the glacier had retreated to the border of present-day Canada. During its advance, the glacier had carved out Lake Washington, Lake Tapps, Lake Sammamish, Puget Sound, and Hood Canal. The other major shaper of the land -- the pushing of the Pacific Plate underneath the North American plate, and the docking of terranes (fragments of continents) had already occurred long before.
This glacier was the last "stade" (a glacial advance and retreat) to cover the region. It was the last glacier of the Pleistocene Epoch, which lasted from 2 million years b.p. (before present) to about 10,000 years b.p. As far south as the Seattle area to the west and the Spokane area to the east, the glacier, at its thickest, reached 3,000 feet of ice. To give a comparison, the Pacific Northwest's tallest skyscraper (as of 2003), Seattle's Bank of American Tower (Columbia Tower), is about 997 feet tall.
In Eastern Washington, retreating glaciers formed temporary ice dams holding back billions of gallons of snowmelt. As these dams weakened and burst, they unleashed titanic floods which scoured the Columbia Basin and created the Grand Coulee in a matter of days. Geologist J Harlen Bretz first theorized these gargantuan gullywashers in the 1920s, and subsequent research has confirmed that the "Spokane Floods" were the greatest such cataracts in the known history of the planet.
The Pleistocene Epoch was characterized by glacial stades and by warmer interglacial periods. The fossils of plants and animals that lived during interglacial periods and just after the Vashon glacier retreated included the horse, bison, caribou, woolly mammoth, and the mastodon. The barren land left by the glacier was gradually filled by a primeval forest dominated by Douglas fir. Human beings, believed to have arrived in Washington from Asia as early as 20,000 years ago if not before that, also inhabited this prehistoric landscape.
To log this cache, please answer these questions.
1) There were two major shapers of the land. What was the other one?
2) What did the Spokane Floods create?
Also make a close examination of the rock, tell me about some interesting geologic features you discover, and theorize what may have caused these things to occur.
OPTIONAL Please take a photo at the site, and post it in your log.
Answers to both questions are required to claim a find.
Update--9/2/19:
NO multiple logs are allowed. Each cacher claiming a find MUST submit their own message to me. Any that do not send a message will lose their find.
Please do not include the answers to the questions in your on-line logs, either in the clear or encrypted. Doing either will get your log deleted.
