Cherry Creek – Hell’s Canyon
Today our journey In the Wake of Lewis and Clark left the actual track of the Corps of Discovery as we ran about 50 miles up Hell’s Canyon of the Snake River. Even though those intrepid explorers barely looked south from the mouth of the Clearwater, they did speculate about the larger river’s origin and its relationship to the Salmon River, which they had seen months earlier. Captain Clark correctly inferred that they were some of the same water.
While not directly part of the Lewis and Clark story, Hell’s Canyon and its geology are an essential piece of the natural history of the Pacific Northwest. Written in the rocks are stories of glacial floods, continental drift, explosive volcanoes, and the great basalt flows, which account for so much of the Columbia Basin’s history and geography.
The canyon walls are so massive that the occasional inclusion of a relatively small and beautiful feature offers a welcome counterpoint. Such a place is Cherry Creek, dropping into the Snake not far from the mouth of the Salmon. This oasis of green within the overall brown and black rock seems especially inviting. Here, the habitat of bighorn sheep, golden eagles, and bobcats gives way to a place for small birds and human visitors. The green tree is Douglas hackberry, which was first collected by Meriwether Lewis along the lower Snake River.
Today our journey In the Wake of Lewis and Clark left the actual track of the Corps of Discovery as we ran about 50 miles up Hell’s Canyon of the Snake River. Even though those intrepid explorers barely looked south from the mouth of the Clearwater, they did speculate about the larger river’s origin and its relationship to the Salmon River, which they had seen months earlier. Captain Clark correctly inferred that they were some of the same water.
While not directly part of the Lewis and Clark story, Hell’s Canyon and its geology are an essential piece of the natural history of the Pacific Northwest. Written in the rocks are stories of glacial floods, continental drift, explosive volcanoes, and the great basalt flows, which account for so much of the Columbia Basin’s history and geography.
The canyon walls are so massive that the occasional inclusion of a relatively small and beautiful feature offers a welcome counterpoint. Such a place is Cherry Creek, dropping into the Snake not far from the mouth of the Salmon. This oasis of green within the overall brown and black rock seems especially inviting. Here, the habitat of bighorn sheep, golden eagles, and bobcats gives way to a place for small birds and human visitors. The green tree is Douglas hackberry, which was first collected by Meriwether Lewis along the lower Snake River.
