Assumptions to Paradigms

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The diligent work of Ira Allison and his colleagues provides us today with a vivid picture of what impacts Missoula Floods had in northwest Oregon. Based on field-collected evidence and a 'catastrophic blueprint' as drafted by Harlen Bretz, these scientists and scholars determined that 'Lake Allison' filled the Willamette Valley as far south as Eugene, Oregon and reached a 'maximum' depth of 122m due to a partial obstruction of the Columbia River channel formed near Kalama, Washington by flood debris such as boulders, sand, mud and ice.

However, as shown in the 'Lake Allison Erratics' section of this report, this 'maximum' depth was in fact a statistical assumption, based on disregarding the highest 19 data points, all but one recorded by Ira Allison himself in the 1930's. And electing to model the flow restriction, or 'throttle', at Kalama as an 'ice dam' that melted away in a fixed position until failure is a premise misleading to the false conclusion that Missoula Floods were of insignificant impact in southwest Washington State.

The following graphic illustrates Lake Allison, and the blue annotations show the effect of moving what may more descriptively be termed the 'debris throttle' from Kalama to Longview, Washington in an effort to understand the actual, observed effects of some exceptional-elevation Missoula Floods in the Cowlitz River watershed.


But how can I claim, with any degree of certainty, that this 'debris throttle' was ever actually present at Longview? Before obtaining actual field evidence from Goods Quarries, my only confidence was from a prediction coming out of the 'Theoretical Fluid Dynamics Common-Sense Modeling Lab', which postulated that this outcome is actually the expected condition: If the flow restriction formed at Kalama, then it also formed at Longview because it was, in fact, the same flow restriction!

Following is the perfect mechanical engineering analogy, to help readers envision how this could be true:

• To return the Columbia to free-flowing, the flow restriction at Kalama first needs to be pushed out the mouth of the Columbia River. The river will remain 'debris throttled' until the restriction clears the 'S-bend' and enters the expanding channel beyond Longview, Washington.
  
• Analogous to shoving a hairball through a P-trap with a plumbing snake, your bathroom sink is going to remain clogged until you get that hairball to the riser in the wall.
  

Yes, mechanical engineers -- we're the profession that designed your plumbing system. Next time after visiting the restroom, why don't you give the first mechanical engineer you see a big 'Thanks, pal!' and a high-five (wash your hands, first!) for not having to resort to any of the alternatives?

So how this relates to the Cowlitz Slough is that, far from being unlikely to form, in fact the formation of the Cowlitz Slough is nearly impossible to prevent, as this predictably massive flow restriction was hydraulically shoved through a section of the Columbia Gorge, with sea levels 100m lower than they are today. The process evidently took from several days to perhaps weeks.

In summary we can conclude that sometime in the recent pedagogical past were formulated two simplifying assumptions, each of which were useful to some degree in reconstructing the chronology of Lake Allison:

• Disregard about 5% of the most extreme samples of the erratic elevation data set, and
• Always estimate the flow restriction to be at Kalama, and disregard what may or may not have happened elsewhere.

Soon one scholarly report begets another and another, by reference upon reference, prolific as hamsters and gerbils. And before many generations of knowledge-building were complete, these two modest assumptions evolved into 'guidepost paradigms' that steered many inquisitive minds away from investigating the impact of Missoula Floods in southwest Washington.

Thus the moral of this story is to never let a reasonable hypothesis be dissuaded by guidepost paradigms. Be sure to investigate the origin of these paradigms, because if they can be cut-down with verifiable evidence and common sense, you can split them into kindling wood for your hypothetical fire!

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A Preconceived Hypothesis

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A scientist friend once tried to bait me with the accusation of "desperately trying to prove a preconceived hypothesis". To which I responded with a grin that I was "way beyond needing to 'desperately' prove anything", and then diplomatically changed the subject. Not that there ever was any scandal in "trying to prove a preconceived hypothesis" -- because in fact all hypotheses are 'preconceived'.

'Preconception' occurs in a mind with the ability to postulate and hold-open a question for which there seems to be no immediate answer, pending future data inputs that may provide resolution. Simply stated, no set of facts, observations or data ever arranges itself as a coherent explanation for anything. Someone with a 'preconception' for what it is they want to explain must first perceive the facts, observations and data in a way that seems to sensibly answer the held-open question. And this is the very essence of any hypothesis.

Before conceptual unification, the 'preconceived hypothesis' to which my scientist friend was referring did admittedly preexist in my mind as a 'fact' and a 'question':

• Fact: If ever there were a set of events that could provide excessive kinetic energy to shape landforms unexpectedly, it was the Missoula Floods.
• Question: No explanation for the process that created Mima Mounds had adequately accounted for the enormous kinetic energy required. Where did it come from?
  

But each were stored separately, at different addresses in the cerebral database. Like flint and steel to make a spark, they first needed to be somehow struck together to light the tiny flame of a 'preconceived hypothesis'.

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Argillite & 99.9%

'Lithology' is essentially the defining characteristics of rocks and minerals, and 'Stratigraphy' is essentially the study of rock and sediment layering. As engineers seek to answer questions with the Laws of Thermodynamics, geologists seek answers in the fundamental truths of Lithology and Stratigraphy.

While this may seem like just two professional examples of Maslow's Law of the Instrument, in practical application the study of Root Cause Analysis shows that independent lines of reasoning with alternate bases of assumptions, both arriving at the same conclusion, provides a much higher level of statistical confidence in the results than either line of reasoning alone.

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Geologists are a skeptical lot. And I can certainly appreciate why: When your profession is the gatekeeper for the Earth's natural history, one needs to be consistently vigilant in response to those who seek colorful revisions in accordance to their own personal agenda. And when your professional expertise includes superbly-honed rock and mineral identification skills, it is only natural to look for fundamental truths framed by question of lithology.

So while I may be 95% certain of my conclusions with respect to the origin of the Goods Formation, based on an engineering prediction of the required hydraulics subsequently supported by field data, and 95% certainty is a 'green light' criteria for many engineering and business decisions, for a respected geologist to support a revision to the Earth's natural history proposed by another profession, 95% just isn't good enough. And here again I can appreciate why: Because the last thing you might do in your professional geology career is defend some engineer's tilted windmill in front of a roomful of skeptical colleagues.

Thus one of the geologist for this research effort has set the following criteria for 99.9% certainty with respect to the Goods Formation, framed in terms of lithology: Locate several glacial erratics constituted primarily of the sedimentary metamorphic mineral known as 'argillite', similar in composition to this 30-ton specimen found at Erratic State Park in Oregon.

Now that I know what we're looking for, given these excellent detailed photos courtesy of the Geological Survey of Canada and the extensive glacial erratic content of the Goods Formation, I am 95% certain that it is simply a matter of time and effort, ranging from a few days to a few months, before we find them.

If by chance we don't find argillite after a reasonable effort, then we'll need to deduce another other way to elevate the geological confidence level to 99.9% for some exceptional Missoula Floods entering the Chehalis watershed. Because from an engineering confidence level of 95%, it is pretty clear where the kinetic energy and unaccountable materials came from that helped create Mima Mounds!

Chehalis Spillway from Mima Mounds

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Dynamic Stratigraphy

'Stratigraphy' is essentially the study of rock and sediment layering. 'Classic' sediment deposits form in perfectly planar, parallel layers. It is when these layers get compressed, scorched, warped, punctured, folded over, and uplifted that geologists really start to get interested. And when sedimentary layers become folded-over to the point where they form rolling dynamic aggregating nodules, its time to call the mechanical engineers!

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Field Work Summary

Spent most of the morning of October 20th, 2010 at Goods Quarry #2 near Napavine, WA. Also briefly visited Goods Quarry #3, and documented the day's findings in this geotagged photo set. After ruminating on these first-hand observations, in my mind the debate about whether or not Missoula Floods had any influence here is over but for the details in the report writing.

Strong evidence was provided by a multitude of spheroid and ovoid clay nodules with an evident 'dynamic stratigraphy' suggesting a rolling motion as they were deposited. Nodules were observed most commonly in the lowest clay strata, varying in size from a few centimeters to the more than half-meter specimen shown in this photo:

Half-meter long clay nodule, More Photos

Geologists have cautioned that what I am describing as 'dynamic stratigraphy' may in fact be 'spheroidal weathering' of the underlying basalt bedrock. At first, I was certain that what I was seeing could not be in-situ weathered clay due to the fact that erratics may be observed both within the strata containing the large nodules, and within the large nodules themselves.

But after witnessing actual in-situ basalt weathering at Goods Quarry #3, in a strata which appeared unaffected and thus containing no erratics, I've devoted both careful thought and some initial investigation into the subject of sedimentary structures. And I can now envision a scenario where we may both be right, which is the focus of the next sub-section.

Extraction site of GQ2001, an example of gray sandstone, More Photos

Formative Engineering Conjecture

Study of fluid mechanics teaches that aggregating nodules such as these must be formed dynamically, in a viscous fluid flow. Essentially the process can be described as a 'snowball effect', where a 'kernel' becomes ever-larger as it rolled by a viscous fluid through a layer of sticky material.

Two conditions help the nodule maintain its integrity as it becomes larger:

• Rolling it at an ever-slowing rate, and
• Gradually increasing the viscosity of the surrounding fluid

In the case of Missoula Flood flows applied to this location, both of these conditions are predictably expected as floodwaters receded. After observing the strata of undisturbed in-situ weathered basalt at Goods Quarry #3, my hypothesis has now come to expect a layer of native clay, predictable after the roughly 16 million years that this likely Grande Ronde Basalt has been sitting here at the foot of Mt. Rainier saturated with moisture. But depending upon location within the spillway and elevation with respect to the saddle, there is evidence to suggest that some floodwaters were powerful enough to strip the in-situ clay down to bedrock.

As floodwaters rose quickly and reached maximum elevation, the topsoil was scoured from the spillways down to the in-situ weathered basalt, and thus the in-situ clay may have provided a significant portion of the material observed in the photos above, as it was peeled-off and rolled by the current. In the process of formation, erratics would fall from ice-rafts and become trapped within structures comprised significantly of the in-situ clay.

This elevation with respect to Lake Allison was at the very maximum achieved by a Missoula Floods event, and thus the only material expected from floodwaters here are the suspended ultra-pulverized clay and organic material, and ice-rafted erratics ranging two orders of magnitude in size -- from grains of sand to bowling ball cobbles. Larger erratics are not excluded, but they have not yet been found at this location.

Then almost as quickly as it had risen, Lake Allison's altitude began falling, trapping the suspended clay material in a decelerating flow along with innumerable ice rafts. As the flow decelerated, the viscosity increased as the suspended material became ever-more concentrated.

Conclusion

Here and at the upper inundation elevations of the Willamette Valley are the only areas to date where Missoula Floods clay has been identified. But above 122m in the Willamette Valley, geologists seem to favor the explanation that clay deposits were formed from aeolian (wind-blown) clay. This explanation is difficult to rebut with a Missoula Floods conjecture, since around the ancient shoreline at the high-stand of Lake Allison, any Missoula Floods clay deposit will likely not contain erratics due to ice raft scattering.

However, now that it has been demonstrated that Missoula Floods clay was in fact deposited above 122m elevation and thus representative sampling can be done with confidence, geologists may perform laboratory analysis to identify signature constituents. With this new information, there may be more Missoula Floods clay yet positively identified at some surprising locations and elevations in both Washington and Oregon.

And while the final chapter of how they were created needs more careful study and input from sedimentology experts, it is predictable that here and only here with respect to Missoula Floods will be found the highly-unique 'dynamic stratigraphy' observed in these enormous clay nodules.

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Elevation Profiles

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Pulp Nonfiction

In many ways this really is a scientific detective story. We have a crime scene, Mima Mounds, where the evidence, many hundreds of thousands of tons of gravel and sand vertically displaced in a regular pattern, suggests an extraordinarily large and powerful perpetrator.

And here's a tip just phoned in by some mechanical engineer playing with Google Earth -- we now have a suspect, a Pleistocene monster called 'Missoula Floods'. How do we either establish the potential connection, or clear this suspect from further investigation?

As a detective, the top three items on your investigative checklist are 'Means, Motive and Opportunity'. 

• Means: Was the suspect, Missoula Floods, powerful enough to create the crime scene observed at Mima Mounds?  Given the grand-scale mayhem this suspect is famous for, the modest vertical material displacements at Mima Mounds seem like a trifling distraction.  But make no mistake, this suspect had the means to do this deed.
  
  'Check' on Means, continue investigating!
  
  
• Motive: A rampaging maniac like Missoula Floods doesn't needs a motive, just the simple opportunity to commit the crime is enough provocation.
  
  'Check' on Motive, continue investigating!
  
  
• Opportunity: To determine if the suspect had the opportunity to commit this crime, we just need to answer three simple questions:
  
  

• Proximity: Was the suspect known to be perpetrating other crimes near to where this crime was committed? The answer to this question is 'yes', Mima Mounds were formed near Olympia, Washington and Missoula Floods always finished-up an interstate rampage by running amok down in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. The distance is about 170km.
  
  Check on Proximity for Opportunity, close enough to continue investigating!
  
  

• Timing: Were the crimes known to be perpetrated by the suspect committed in the same time-frame of the crime under investigation? Again, the answer to this question is 'yes', Mima Mounds were formed and Missoula Floods rampaged near the end of the last Ice Age.
  
  'Check' on Timing for Opportunity, close enough to continue investigating!
  
  

• Access: Is there an access route to this crime scene that the suspect may have used? Perhaps, but the topography is challenging...170km is the distance from Oregon to Mima Mounds, but up and over an intermediate drainage divide, or ridge. We have reports from Oregon detectives that the suspect was able to scale elevations as high as 122m, and perhaps even higher.
  
  Since we know this monster came from Montana, the 170km distance doesn't sound like a problem. What about the elevation? How high is the ridge? Is it really high enough to discourage a cold-blooded serial killer?
  
  To finish answering the 'access' question, we need to determine the approximate minimum height of the ridge, and then check it against the suspect's known capability. The highest elevation at the lowest point of the ridge is called the 'saddle', and this is where our suspect most likely would've accessed the scene of the crime, if indeed our suspect actually committed it.
  
  But finding the saddle was a bit easier said than done using Google Earth. The real problem is, you can find many saddles. Is the one you have just found the lowest, or do you keep looking? With some ridges, it is obvious by inspection where the saddle is. With this one, saddle candidates stretched for 15km across what I now believe to be the Main Spillway.
  
  After some trial-and-error, at last I found a satisfactory saddle candidate at elevation 140m. This was only 15% more than the suspect's known capability, and well within the 'reported' estimates up to 180m.
  
  So 'check' on the question of 'Access for Opportunity', and 'check' on the overall question of Opportunity!
  
  

Thus, the results of our initial investigative checklist has determined that the suspect, Missoula Floods, had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime for which the roughly 40 square kilometer extents of Mima Mounds lay in mute testament when discovered, some 150 years ago.

Hydraulic Elevation Profile

But speculation about means, motive, and opportunity alone are insufficient for a conviction in any Geological Supreme Court. To obtain a conviction, we will need to find physical evidence linking the suspect to the crime scene, and the more evidence the better. To begin our search for evidence, we should consider looking at a place where we know the suspect had to be in order to access the crime scene.

And that place, in this case, is the hydraulic saddle between the Cowlitz River and Chehalis River watersheds. 'Hydraulic saddle' is an arcane engineering term that may be defined essentially as the 'lowest line of passage between two watersheds'.  Of the many saddles stretching across the drainage divide, the hydraulic saddle will be the least of all in elevation.

Not satisfied with my trial-and-error estimate, I was determined to find out exactly where the hydraulic saddle occurred on the Cowlitz-Chehalis drainage divide before starting the search for actual physical evidence. 

Beginning at the Columbia River near Kalama, Washington and following railroad tracks and stream-beds, I carefully traced a close approximation of the minimum, or 'hydraulic' (because that is the path that a flowing stream would follow) elevation change path up and over the drainage divide, down to Mima Mounds, and out to the Pacific Ocean at Aberdeen, Washington. When this path is plotted on a vertical scale showing elevation change, engineers call it the 'hydraulic elevation profile'.

Fig. 1: Hydraulic Elevation Profile from Kalama to Aberdeen.
View in Google Earth

• The hydraulic elevation profile's highest point was 132m, 8m lower than my 'trial-and-error' first approximation, and only 10m higher than the suspect's documented capability.
  
• More importantly, the true hydraulic saddle was about 10km west of my initial, trial-and-error estimated location.
  
• This turned out to be crucial in locating Goods Quarries, which are shown in the frame of the satellite image above, although I didn't actually spot them for perhaps another week.
  
• But in a stroke of serendipity, I did manage to locate the two quarries noted, less than 3km from the true hydraulic saddle.
  
  

  

  Fig. 2: Goods Quarry #1
  View in Google Earth

• There I spotted 'scads' of interesting-looking material that bore a striking resemblance to sedimentary deposits throughout the Willamette Valley.
  
  

Fig. 3: Goods Quarry #2

• So I made an initial investigative field trip in early October 2010 that netted the name and phone number of the quarry operator. It was Sunday afternoon and the quarry gates were locked, but in another stroke of serendipity I found, in less than 30 seconds of searching, a chunk of coarse-grained 'granite' in a pile of pit run containing the tell-tale 'yellow clay' at a city park under construction nearby in Napavine, Washington.
  
  

  

  Fig. 4: Coarse-grained 'granite' posed on basalt for reference

  
  
• Now maybe, just maybe, this granite was from a Mt. Rainier formation. But in photographs, the granite in those formations appeared fine-grained. This coarse-grained specimen I had a suspicion could very well be my first apprehended fugitive from the Canadian Rockies.
• But far more evidence would be required than one random rock, so I vowed to return during quarry operational hours to search for more. Also in this time frame Goods Quarry #3 was identified, about 8 km northwest of the first two.
  
  

  

  Fig. 5: Goods Quarry #3

• Finally I was able to make advance arrangements with quarry owner Alan Goode, and returned on Wednesday, October 20th 2010 to begin a serious search for evidence of that Pleistocene monster called 'Missoula Floods'.
  

And what I found at Goods Quarry #2 far exceeded my wildest expectations -- the engineering insight of my 'preconceived hypothesis' led directly to the discovery of a previously-unrecognized geological formation!

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