The website is written by Dave Tucker. I am a research associate at Western Washington University’s geology department. While my research focuses primarily on volcanic rocks and events at Mount Baker and the nearby Hannegan caldera, this website is not limited to volcanic geology.
This is intended to be a cooperative effort. Please use a comment to contact me about submitting field trips you want to write, or places you’d like to know more about.
This website will post illustrated geology field trips to sites where you can lay hands on cool geology, or get good overviews of the geology of northwest Washington and southwestern British Columbia. Some field trips will be along roads, some will require hiking, and there will be trips for demented folks like me who don’t mind a little, or a lot, of cross country travel– bushwhacking, scrambling, stream crossing, glacier crossing, and the like.
Hope you enjoy it. If you do, please forward the URL to others you know who might like it. Word of mouth is the #1 means of publicizing this website. Also, please sign up for an email subscription, so you will know when new trips have been posted.
Some of the most popular items in this website:
The Lake Stevens erratic, among the largest known in the US, discovered in June 2011.
Diatryma, the giant flightless bird and its 50 million-year-old fossil footprints.
Your EMAIL ADDRESS is NEVER used by this blog or wordpress.com for ANY purpose except to contact you about updates to this blog, or about events of interest related to northwest geology.
You can contact me at this cleverly disguised email address:
tuckerd ‘at’ geol ‘dot’ wwu ‘dot’ edu.
This helps keep spammers out of my inbox.
Cheers,
Dave Tucker
Bellingham, Washington
Thanks for putting the field trip info together!!!
I’m in Port Townsend so am most able to join trips in the area, but am happy to go further afield as time allows. Not a geologist…just a well informed lover of rocks.
I look forward to emails from you about trips.
Leslie
Leslie,
Well, I don’t offer actual field trips. I’ve been thinking of doing this as a little side business. Is their interest from others out there to get together for a guided trip to interesting geo-sites?
DT
As an older Geology student (older than dirt) – and recently returned to college to finish up my BS and go for a MS with intentions of getting into Petroleum Geology (I used to work in the oil patch as a field technician) – I would be very interested if you decide to offer some guided trips to geology sites!
Marcy
I’m a Bellinghamster without a car, and personally, I’d love a chance to relive the field trips of my college days.
Elizabeth,
Try the geology field trips I lead through the WWU Academy for Lifelong Learning. Also, I teach for North Cascades Institute. Dave
I have been trying to find this location for the last few weeks since a friend of mine, Rand Jack, mentioned it to me. Said a friend of his told him about it. Are you that friend? Anyway, I went up the road you speak of but didn’t know of the diving off spot, I had just started investigating the spurs. Last week, I went up the bike trail up the other side of the creek and could see the landslide. I marked the coords on my gpsr and was going to attempt the road approach again. Now, with your help, I am heading up in just a few minutes. Thank you!
And I guess I should say which hike…Racehorse Falls Landslide.
Hi – I’m a recently retired Drama teacher with no science background who now finds herself in a Geology 101 class at Whatcom Community College: picture the grey-haired woman in the back row amongst all the 18-year-olds. It’s absolutely fascinating. Go figure. As for the guided tours, I’m very interested. (Though the more challenging hiking may be beyond my skills.) Please keep me informed if you decide to go forward with this idea, and thank you for the website!
Kitty
Glad you like the website, Kitty. Easy to picture the woman you describe– one of the great things about WCC. When I went back to college to start my graduate degree a decade ago, I started at Whatcom with remedial algebra classes. I was not the oldest in that class, and often not in the following ‘higher math’, chemistry, or physics classes. The age disparity became REALLY big when I transferred to WWU for the Masters program. Hang in there, never stop learning. You might be interested in courses taught through WWU’s Academy for Lifelong Learning. Find them on the web. I teach geology through them. Dave (another gray hair).
I just want to say thank you for putting all the work in to create this website. It was great that the Herald saw fit to write about it!
I moved up to Toad Lake from California five years ago and finding your blog brings me an entirely new way to appreciate the area where we live. I am a complete novice about geology, but I’m still the little girl with the rocks in her pockets, even though I am the same age, more or less, as you are. Can’t wait to read more!
Thanks again,
Susanne Freeborn
Susanne, glad you liked the website. We won’t discuss our ages, thank you. Subscribe, if you didn’t already. Dave
[PS] Don’t overfill your pockets with rocks! Your pants could fall down!
Hi Dave,
I am an old prospector and enjoy bushwhacking, scrambling, stream crossing and old mines
Also, please sign me up for an email subscription, so I will know when new trips have been posted.
Thanks in advance
Kris
Kris-
Sounds like you know how to fun! You need to sign yourself up for updates by clicking the ‘subscribe’ link at the upper left of the website. Dave
Hi Dave…interesting idea! Will check in regularly.
Kyle House
WWU geology class of 1989
Dave,
I’m a humble youngster taking PNW Geology through WAOL, more specifically through Ralph Dawes at Wenatchee Valley College, and stumbled upon your site as I look for supplementary information regarding my term project on Wildcat Cove, off of Chuckanut Drive. I just moved to Bellingham from Clarkston, Washington and am fascinated by the distinctly different landscape. I’m even contemplating going to WWU for a degree in Geology to teach Earth Science. Who knows? I’m in love with this. Thanks for creating your website!
Samantha,
I very strongly recommend WWU for Earth Science Education. There are a couple of really great geology profs there who doubel in the ed department, Scott Linneman and Sue DeBari. Glad you like the website. Let us know what you find out about Wildcat Cove!
Dave
Hi Dave
What about the big rock on the beach in Whiterock BC?
The town is named after it. Also I know of two glacial erratics on the shoreline; on the SW corner of Jones Island, and on the south shore of Orcas Island, east of Grindstone Harbor.
I just subscribed. Glad to see you doing well.
Yours for the OBU,
Ward
Can you tell me why, when climbing up a mountain of serpentine rock on the Ingalls Lake trail, when you get to the pass, you then look across a valley that is a straight as a string, to Mt Stuart, which is as far as I know pure granite? In the same area(Teanaway), when you climb up eastward out of Bean Creek Basin, the ridgetop is decorated by what looks to me like pillow basalts. There must be some story here!
Peg,
Thanks for commenting. There is indeed a story here. I have never done any field work in the Teanaway, though I have climbed there plenty. The Stuart batholith intrudes the older rocks in this area. The contact doesn’t actually follow the ‘straight as a string ‘ Ingalls valley, however- some of the Stuart rock is south of Ingalls Creek as well. The geologic map is found at http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i1311/wengmp.pdf go to the upper left corner to find the Stuart area [pink units].
The serpentinized rocks are a small mantle slice, similar to the Twin Sisters west of Mount Baker. I don’t know about the specific rocks above Bean Creek, don’t recall being there or seeing these. But the Ingalls area has been refered to as an ophiolite, a section through the crust that includes the uppermost mantle rocks as well as some seafloor basalt. Maybe that is the story you saw. Since it is the Cascades, there are likely to be the usual complications to the simple explanation. There is a 2008 paper about the area, a link to the abstract is here.
Dave
Hi Dave,
Just stumbled upon your website while getting to know the Misch collection at North Cascades National Park.
Am voting an emphatic YES! on the idea of guided trips. In the meantime, thanks for the field trip guide! *As soon as the road opens, I’m going to the Pollywog Agmatite*
Your Fellow Rock Nerd,
Erin
Dave
I am interested in your guided field trips but for some reason when I tried to subscribe it said I was not activated?? Any ideas?
DT replies:
I have no idea what is meant by ‘not connected’. Can any other readers help with this?
Pat’s comment showed up as a notification in my email inbox, as all comments do, for me to approve or not. When I clicked on ‘approve’ it showed up on the website, as normally occurs.
Scott Babcock recommended this site to our class this evening. It looks like you have done a very good job. Can’t wait to enjoy the “field trips”. I want to be a geologist when I grow up (shhhhhh don’t tell anyone but I am 46).
Cindy P- never too late to be a geologist. I did my first field work at your age, and started grad school at WWU at 50!
DT
The Evergreen State College Geology Club thanks you for this awesome website!
Thanks, Greener geologists!
Glad you like the website! Please tell me about any of the trips you have made. How about writing about a place you enjoy visiting that is not on the website? This website is intended to be collaborative.
Dave
I have been a rock hounder for the last 25 years and just recently added prospecting to the list of things to learn about.
I love to soak up any geology info I can get
Thanks Nate
Very interesting. I will keep checking back!
Do you know anything about the ‘boulder’ just northeast of Tonasket, on the way to Republic?
http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=BOULDER&w=9518053%40N05
- Lane
Lane,
I’ve never seen this split rock. Looks metamorphic. Maybe some other reader has a clue.
Dave
I live in East Wenatchee and am trying to identify the strata of rocks along the Columbia River specifically the Rock Island Grade. Do you have info on this area?
Kahni
Kahni,
The Rock Island Grade climbs up the east wall of the Columbia [I found it on Google Earth]. I don’t know the area specifically, but looking at it in GE, I see that the lowest switchbacks climb up an alluvial fan, then enters what must be Columbia River basalt up to the top. There isn’t enough detail to see if there are any of the sedimentary interbeds of the Ellensburg Formation- these are lake and alluvial deposits laid down on top of lava flows prior to being buried by the next flow. I don’t know of a geologic reference for the area. If there are any specific outcrops you are curious about, you are welcome to take some photos and email them to me. I’ll try to help identify what you are seeing.
DT
Dave, I stumbled across your blog and see that you are planning to come to Ilwaco soon. I have a motel close to that site and hope you come by and get a room while you are here. You look familiar and I think I know you from Bellingham.
Gale,
Thanks for the invite, but no plans to come soon. I will be posting an online field trip to the pillows at Cape Disappointment State Park later today.
If any website readers stay at Gale’s motel, the 101 Haciendas in Ilwaco, please send me a report.
DT