Fallen rock debris swept clear...

of the Fish Lake Trail by a crew from Washington State Parks, yet the hazard of rock topple still remains along this short stretch of passage.

Site in early July 2023, but the rockfall occurred during winter or spring.

Site today following cleanup of fallen debris on the trail. One leaning basalt column remains.

A soft, sedimentary interbed lies below the columnar-jointed basalt lava flow unit and is considerably more erodible. The excavation of the railroad cut in the early 20th century exposed the contact and this will likely have to be maintained in perpetuity. Trail users beware!

A clever and simple early warning system...

was in use by the operators of the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company in the early 1900s to guard against rockfalls spilling onto the tracks and causing an accident. A series of electrified wires were strung along the more unstable sections of the rock cuts in the columnar basalts that are prone to toppling. Should the circuit be cut it would potentially indicate that a rock had severed the wire. Some relics of this system remain along the paved trail in the form of standing poles, some with insulators. The line was abandoned by the railroad in 1987 and eventually incorporated into the Columbia Plateau State Park Trail.

Location of a recent rockfall onto the paved trail. The vertical spacing of the insulators suggests a series of parallel wires, strung pole to pole, along the length of a cut.

Evolving wireless broadband technology...

has enabled a faster and more reliable connection to the Internet from my rural residence in eastern Washington. I can highly recommend T-Mobile’s 5G Wi-Fi Gateway device if it is available in your area, where I am enjoying two orders of magnitude increase in both upload and download speeds over my previous provider. And at only $50/month (with no contract and no data caps) it’s half the cost of my previously lousy service. Zoom zoom!

 
 

Typical results of a speed test with the new T-Mobile 5G device on my home network.

This rockfall was predicted...

last summer by yours truly, the humble author of this pointless blahg. This basalt column along the Fish Lake Trail was toppled during the wet spring season, likely promoted by freeze/thaw occurring in the joints. Here’s the situation I encountered on the first ride after my return to eastern Washington.

High in the Uintah Mountains...

lie two large limestone caves, each of which swallows a stream fed by snow melt runoff, and because of this, both are particularly treacherous to enter. Both cave entrances, the insurgences, occur at a little over 8,000 feet in elevation, with Big Brush Spring, more than 5 miles away and 2,000 feet lower, serving as the resurgence for these subterranean waters .

Big Brush Creek Cave.

Little Brush Creek Cave.