The Geologic Story of Mount Rainier: A look at the geologic past of one of America's most scenic volcanoesCrandell, Dwight R. (Dwight Raymond)
Science
The Geologic Story of Mount Rainier: A look at the geologic past of one of America's most scenic volcanoes
Crandell, Dwight R. (Dwight Raymond)
Geology -- Washington (State) -- Rainier, Mount; Rainier, Mount (Wash.)
At about the same time as the Paradise avalanche and mudflow occurred, a
tremendous rock mass also slid off the east side of the volcano in the
area between Steamboat Prow and Little Tahoma Peak. This slide formed a
mudflow on the floor of the White River valley that was several hundred
feet deep at the north boundary of the park and that extended at least
30 miles beyond the base of the volcano. The most remarkable feature of
the deposit left by this mudflow is its surface, which is dotted with
scores of mounds 5-35 feet high and as much as several hundred feet in
diameter. These mounds have cores of huge rocks which are similar in
size to those scattered on the surface of the avalanche deposits from
Little Tahoma Peak. You can see the mounds best in an area which is a
few miles north of the park boundary, west of the White River, and which
can be reached by the Huckleberry Creek Forest Road. The total volume of
this mudflow deposit may be as much as one-fifth of a cubic mile.
These great landslides and mudflows were followed shortly by another
whose size surpassed that of anything before or since. This was the
remarkable Osceola Mudflow, which streamed down the valleys of the White
River and West Fork about 5,800 years ago. When these great rivers of
mud joined in the White River valley, they formed an even larger mudflow
which swiftly flowed downvalley for a distance of 15 miles and then
spread beyond the Cascade mountain front into the Puget Sound lowland.
There the mudflow submerged a total area of more than 100 square miles
to depths as great as 70 feet and buried the sites of the present towns
of Enumclaw and Buckley. One tongue of it even flowed into an arm of
Puget Sound, south of Seattle, that has since been filled with river
deposits to form the fertile valley occupied by the towns of Kent,
Auburn, Sumner, and Puyallup.
The Osceola Mudflow is remarkable in that it affected areas so far from
its place of origin. This long distance of travel was due to its great
volume, which we estimate to have been more than half a cubic mile, and
to the abundance of slippery clay in it. The clay had been formed by the
alteration of rocks in the volcano by hot gases and solutions over many
centuries.
[Illustration: The northeast flank of Mount Rainier. A remnant of the
Osceola Mudflow lies at the summit of Steamboat Prow in the center. Two
and one-half miles to the left is Little Tahoma Peak, from whose steep
north face at least seven large masses of rock fell in 1963. Mount Adams
volcano can be seen at the left, and Mount Hood, Oregon, in the far
distance. (Fig. 21)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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