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Sedimentary Facies of Scabland Deposits

Boulder gravels - Pateros

Laminated sands w/ ripups - Latah Ck, Pasco Basin

Touchet Beds - WWV

Gravel-bottomed rhythmites - Hwy 14 gullies,

Reworked colluvium - Pataha area, Hwy 14 gullies

Glacial Lake Columbia rhythmites - Hunters shoreline

Sanpoil style lake-flood stacks - Sanpoil shoreline

Silt diamicts, reworked pebbly silts - Loess

Sand sheets, thin rhythmites - Quincy Basin canal



Touchet Beds - Burlingame Canyon near Lowden, WA. Sand-silt 'slackwater' beds with minor gravel at the base of some. O.P. Jenkins photo.


Touchet Beds - Willow Creek Valley at Cecil, OR.


Touchet Beds - Sand-gravel bottoms and silt-sand slackwater tops. Abundant angular clasts in larger size fractions remobilized from local hillslopes (reworked colluvium). Latah Creek at Qualchan Golf Course west of Spokane, WA.


Laminated sands variant - Latah Creek at Qualchan Golf Course/High Drive, west Spokane, WA.


Laminated sands variant - Smith Canyon near Eltopia, WA.


Laminated sands variant - Rock Creek west of Sundale, WA (tributary to Columbia River).


Reworked colluvium - Columbia Gorge downstream of Wallula Gap at Alder Ridge, WA. Sheeted clastic dikes descend through deposit.


Lake-flood rhythmites variant - Upper Columbia River (Lake Roosevelt) shoreline bluff across from Grand Coulee Dam (Spring Canyon).


Lake-flood rhythmites variant - Flood sands punctuate lakebed deposition along the Sanpoil River. Landslide scarp expsure.



Lake-flood rhythmites variant - Repeated, energetic subaqueous flows with meter-scale flow-deformed beds. Wilmont Creek, WA.


Ancient overland flood gravels variant - Calcrete rip-ups and exotic clasts. Pre-late Wisconsin age deposit at White Bluffs Overlook, WA.


Ancient flood gravel grading upward to silt-pebble diamict (upper portion of flood deposit) - Marengo railcut.


Touchet Bed-like rhythmites with lower portions composed of angular, locally-derived basalt (reworked talus/hillslope colluvium) and upper portions composed of silt-sand. Exposed in gullies of Alder Ridge, WA off Hwy 14.




Lake-flood rhythmites variant - Glacial Lake Columbia. Exposed along Upper Columbia/lake Roosevelt and Sanpoil River Valley.


Lake-flood rhythmites variant - Repetitively-deformed lakebeds along the Sanpoil River. Pulses of flood sand load and remobilize the soupy, sticky, clayey lake beds, creating spectacular dike-sill structures (t-shaped mud squirts) and roll-ups. Cross cutting relationships show the deformation is entirely related to forces imparted by floods entering from the Columbia.


Touchet Beds variant - Rhythmites with laminar sand bases and lighter colored silt caps (late- to inter-flood alluvium). Old Lady Canyon, WA. Was Waitt correct?

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