Ramblin' in the Gorge

Went to the Columbia Gorge yesterday with my ol' forecasting colleague Shawn, who is now with the weather office in Portland. We toured the new Gorge Discovery Center in The Dalles, a museum that gives an excellent overall presentation of the region including history, Native American culture, geology, hydrology, and meteorology. Especially cool are the descriptions and paintings of the Missoula floods, which fascinate me as readers of the blog know. Here Shawn and the trusty lizards are at Rowena Point, on the old Columbia River highway between The Dalles and Hood River.

Near Mosier, a section of the old highway was abandoned a long time ago. It's still closed to cars but has been refurbished for bikes and hikers. It's in that part of the gorge east of Hood River where the climate dries rapidly from west to east as the crest of the Cascade mountains is passed. This shot is on the trail just east of two tunnels drilled through the rock in 1921 for the old highway.

This picture is taken only about two thirds of a mile farther west, on the other side of the tunnels. We're still on the southern side of the gorge, at the same elevation, but the vegetation has changed from pines, oaks, and sagebrush to firs, maples, ferns, and moss. I've always been fascinated by the abrupt change in climate and vegetation that you encounter in the gorge without a significant change in elevation. It's about 40 miles from Cascade Locks to The Dalles; in that distance rainfall decreases from around 80 inches annually to about 12.

A couple days earlier I hiked up to Mirror Lake, near Mount Hood. Hood is the iconic mountain of northwest Oregon. It towers over Portland, and is prominent at Hood River in the gorge and through the northern Willamette Valley. The mountain and its surrounding area have long been a playground for Portlanders. Like the other Cascade peaks, Hood is a volcano, and not an extinct one. It last erupted in the 1700s and will do so again one day. Hopefully when it does, there will be enough warning for the skiers to bail out beforehand.