Tuesday's postcard, and one of the great shows on Earth

May 2, 2023

Canyon sunrise northwest of Othello, WA

It is more than a footnote for a visit to Palouse Falls that the river tumbling into the majestic plunge pool did not create the plunge pool. It’s just borrowing it.

The Palouse River, for most of its life, finished its long journey in a reach the drained about 20 miles to the west, where it bent south and emptied into the Columbia River near what is now Pasco. Today it makes a dramatic, 90 degree turn to the south, between Washtucna and Hooper, making its last run, through a magnificent canyon, to into the Snake River. It does so by borrowing a basalt gorge created by the Ice Age floods roughly 17,000 years ago.

Video from the west rim at the falls

Palouse River canyon upstream from the falls

The upper falls, just upstream from the main event

The falls and its mists

Wild sunflowers in the river gorge

Resident marmot on the ledge

The great canyon below the falls —the Palouse’s post-Pleistocene path to join the Snake River

—tjc