Geo 730: October 13, Day 651: A Break From The Coast

I'll be taking a quick break from our coast trip this past July to preview some of the spots Dana, B. and I visited on our geogalavanting last week. Anne Jefferson introduced us to Upper Proxy Falls last year on her hydrology tour of the upper McKenzie, and I had been back to it with Hollie Oakes-Miller later in the summer, but I had never gone down to the lower falls. Oh. My. It is completely glorious. The upper viewpoint is quick and easy to get to, and I was content to just sit and space out at the beauty of the thing while Dana and B. scrambled down for a closer view near the base. It's not easy to get a sense of scale here; this spot is probably about a fifth to a quarter of a mile from the base of the falls. However, according to this source, the drop is 226 feet. This is an excellent example of a hanging valley. While a large glacier gouged out the valley I'm sitting in, a much smaller tributary glacier didn't incise as deeply in that side drainage. As a result, the stream courses down a side valley, then drops over the sheer side into the larger valley. The topo map at the link shows the landform quite well.

Photo stitched in HugIn. October 9, 2014. FlashEarth Location (approximate).