Stepping Into the Steppe

Article by Kim Brown

My first experience in Central Washington, over 10 years ago, was a drive down the Canyon Road near Ellensburg. I noticed the columnar basalt, though at the time I didn’t know what it was. I soon fell in love with Washington’s shrub-steppe and Channeled Scablands.

Long drives to places like Washtucna, Steptoe Butte, Grand Coulee and Republic, and shorter daytrips to Black Canyon, Beezley Hills, Whiskey Dick Mountain and White Bluffs are delightful. Spring not only produces a profusion of flora and birdsong, but the unsettled weather creates gorgeous cloudscapes.

A hiker inspects a chunk of basalt at Ancient Lakes.

Between 16 and 6 million years ago, up to 100,000 square miles of basalt flowed into Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The flows are up to 13,000 feet thick in some areas—all that basalt is heavy enough to bend the earth’s crust. The landscape was dramatically altered 12,800 to 15,000 years ago by the Bretz Floods, named for J. Harlen Bretz, the geologist who first discovered evidence of them. Released by the breaking of ice dams, huge floods swept over the landscape, carving out the coulees we see today. The Palouse was mostly spared the floodwaters, and the region is covered in fertile soil called loess, creating the undulating farmlands—the kind of pretty landscape often depicted on calendars and posters.

Various zones are found within the shrub-steppe ecosystem. The lithosoil zone, meaning rock-soil, is typical of the Channeled Scablands. The soil is thin or non-existent, and most of the vegetation grows in cracks in the basalt. The talus zone is found in areas containing talus (or crumbling rock), such as the slopes of coulees, rocky outcrops and canyons. The meadow zone is home to ponderosa pine, sedges and rushes, and wildflowers usually associated with the high Cascades, including monkey-flower, shooting star and penstemon. The saline zone exists in an area with rocks containing a high alkaline content.

The White Bluffs at Hanford Reach offer a chance to see sagebrush, grasses and mustard flowers along the rolling Columbia.

Shrub-steppe is known for its sagebrush. In Washington, there are five varieties; tall sagebrush, rigid sagebrush, antelope bitterbrush, rabbitbrush, and winterfat. Aside from its heady fragrance, one cannot forget the sight of a slope of tall sagebrush and its iridescent glow in the low light of sunset, or an approaching storm. Some of the tall sagebrush at Whiskey Dick is over 900 years old!

To survive the dry climate, vegetation has adapted in various ways. Tightly curled leaves lessen surface exposure to sun. A layer of fuzz reduces drying airflow around the leaves. On some plants, a waxy coating on the leaves retains moisture.

Grasses play an important role in the shrub-steppe. Cheatgrass, Idaho fescue, blue bunchgrass, and needlegrass check erosion and provide food and shelter for animals. Common along roadways are piles of tumbleweeds. It was years before I realized I had never seen a live tumbleweed or considered what they really are. Tumbleweeds, or Russian thistles, are like armadillos in that most people have never seen a live one. I discovered the reason—Russian thistles do most of their growing in late summer, long after this heat wimp has fled the steppe in favor of the Cascades.

Each area may have its own special flower, shrub or geological feature. Favorites and observations fill my notes with each trip. While hiking near Sherman Pass, I was delighted to learn that sagebrush grows next to larches there at 7,000 feet. Cowiche Canyon near Yakima boasts a stunning display of desert violet and red-osier dogwood. Beezley Hills and Whiskey Dick Mountain produce impressive herds of hedgehog cactus. If they’re not in bloom, you may not notice hedgies at first. Resembling closed anemones in a tidepool, hedgies grow in lumps of dullish green, huddled in an unassuming pile. It only takes one in bloom to make you realize they’re all around you! The yellow blooms of antelope bitterbrush and silvery tall sage add a sea of color to the landscape. Add lichen-encrusted basalt mounds or cliffs, the trill of meadowlarks, magpies, red-winged blackbirds, and the cluck of a soaring raven—this is Washington’s shrub-steppe.

Central Washington's shrubb-steppe is filled with a profusion of wildflowers and succulents, such as this hedgehog cactus

Grand Coulee is a great place to see Central Washington geology and flora. From Orondo, U.S. Highway 2 climbs steeply through Corbaley Canyon, to pretty Waterville, on to Douglas (and the Douglas Canyon Trail nearby), and to the windblown and flat Waterville Plateau. The highway cuts through vast Moses Coulee, and intersects Highway 17 at the lower Grand Coulee. From here, Dry Falls and Sun Lakes State Park are south. To the north is dramatic upper Grand Coulee, including Steamboat Rock and Northrup Canyon State Parks.

Near Vantage off I-90, you’ll see the remains of an ancient forest at Gingko Petrified Forest State Park. Not far from the park are the Schaake, Quilomene, and Colockum Wildlife Areas, portions of which were settled by pioneers hoping irrigation would bring prosperity. Exploring here, you may stumble on an occasional abandoned homestead site near a lush spring ringed with old, wiry rose bushes and lilac trees, or the remains of a corral.

To Learn More

Guidebooks and Geology
Best Desert Hikes
Dan Nelson and Alan Bauer

Fire, Faults and Floods
Marge & Ted Mueller

Roadside Geology of Washington
David Alt

The proposed Ice Age Flood Trail:
www.iafi.org

Flora
Sagebrush Country: A Wildflower Sanctuary
Ronald J. Taylor

History
Orchards of Eden: White Bluffs on the Columbia, 1907-1943
Nancy Mendenhall

Farther south, the White Bluffs of Hanford Reach is an eerily beautiful place. Though much of the White Bluffs recently suffered a devastating fire, you can still see the remains of orchards planted by pioneers on the banks of the Columbia River. Volunteers are restoring the area by replanting sagebrush. It will be interesting to revisit this beautiful place throughout its transitions.

The town of White Bluffs was settled in the 1880s by pioneers lured by developers’ promises of irrigation and advertisements depicting rosy-cheeked girls carrying baskets overflowing with apples. Pioneers planted their trees—but irrigation was more than a decade away. Orchards had to be watered by buckets hand-drawn from the Columbia River. In 1943, the U.S. government chose White Bluffs as a site for plutonium production and moved the families out. It is now managed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

You can also see giant ripple marks in the topography. Using the book Fire, Faults and Floods as a guide, you can find these giant current ripples—some of them 50 feet tall and up to 2 miles long—near Washtucna, Quincy and Lind.

To verify seasonal closures, restrictions, permits, and hunting seasons, it is advisable to find out who manages the land in the areas you wish to visit. A comprehensive guide is Best Desert Hikes by Dan Nelson and Alan Bauer (Mountaineers Books, $16.95, 2004) Community websites are invaluable for finding the best times to visit an area—and when to avoid it. If you seek solitude, it’s good to know dates of the Sand Hill Crane Festival events near Othello, or opening dates of various hunting seasons near Sprague, both of which draw crowds. Or, you may very well wish to attend the Combine Demolition Derby in Lind. A Washington Gazetteer is a handy companion as well. Keep your eyes on WTA’s Trip Reports online at www.wta.org in anticipation of the flower explosion in springtime in Central Washington rivals that of the golden larches in fall.

Kim Brown is WTA's editorial intern