Palouse Falls Washington State’s official State waterfall, viewed here in early March during heavy spring runoff. If you want to see high flows at the falls, March is usually a good month, but is seeming like spring runoff may be later this year. For those of you unfamiliar with the falls, that is a 200 foot drop from the river to the pool. It is spectacular! Photo by James Richman Photography
Steve’s step child, Andrew Jackson Frishman, has some more great pix of the falls on his CREST, CLIFF & CANYON blog.
“The basalt feathers at the lip of the falls” as Jackson calls them are a neat touch. He also says “Palouse Falls is pretty over-photographed for my tastes” but I can’t say I have seen them pictured often.
The ancestral Palouse River flowed through the currently dry Washtucna Coulee to the Columbia River. The Palouse Falls and surrounding canyons were created when the Missoula floods overtopped the south valley wall of the ancestral Palouse River, diverting it to the current course to the Snake River by erosion of a new channel.
I was surprised they were tied to the Missoula floods.
Also of note, it looks like good chukar country with the rimrock and steep grades.
There’s a delightfully geeky geologist from Central WA U. who has a good concise overview of the stream capture dynamics here:
https://youtu.be/XPDmxtJfHqs
Palouse Falls is also the site of the world record kayak descent (or was for a long time anyway, it may have been surpassed by now, not sure offhand):
https://youtu.be/uNXh9gXDd2Y?t=127