RHH's photos with the keyword: landslide

This is a rather poor photo of the landslide area above Racehorse Creek. It shows where the whole hillside came away, much of it sliding down into the creek and its valley to the left of the picture. Visible at the bottom of the picture is part of the jumble of vegetation, boulders and dirt. The mountain is formed of layers of soft carbonaceous shale and sandstone, which can be seen on the bare cliff left by the slide, and the side of the hill came away at one of the places where these layers met, the flat slope still visible and with little vegetation growing on it. The scale is difficult to comprehend here, but some sense of it can be gotten from the mature trees at the top of the slope. The cliff, from the bottom corner to the top, is around 350 feet. The slide happened on January 5, 2009, after days of warm rain and stormy weather, and two days later there was a flash flood in the creek below when the water of the creek broke through the temporary dam left by the slide.

To the left of the falls is reason for the falls' name. The hole in the rock there does resemble the head of racehorse, though the hole is not always visible when there is more water coming over the falls. Interestingly, another falls further up the creek is named Triple Crown Falls. These falls are in the area of Slide Mountain where we went fossil-hunting, though this photo was taken on another visit to the area. The landslide we searched for fossils is further up the stream and above and to the right side of the picture, on the side of Slide Mountain. In fact, when the landslide occurred on January 5, 2009, the creek was temporarily blocked by the slide and when the water finally broke through caused a flood of water, rocks and trees to come down the creek and over the falls, scouring out the area and changing the landscape. The area of the falls was overgrown with trees at that time but was opened up by the landslide and its results and fossils can be found here as well. In fact, a huge fossil of bird tracks found here is now on display at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Last Saturday, November 9, son Edward and I hiked around Slide Mountain and the Racehorse Creek landslide, looking for fossils. The hike was more of a muddy scramble than anything else, but we found plenty of fossils and also met up with some of Edward's co-workers and spent most of the afternoon with them doing some more fossil hunting and exploring. The Racehorse Creek landslide happened on January 5, 2009, after a days of warm stormy weather and rain (what we call here a Pineapple Express). About 500,000 cubit feet of rock and earth slid down the mountain and into Racehorse Creek temporarily blocking the Creek and two days later causing a massive flood of water, rock and timber down Racehorse Creek. The landslide left a 350 foot cliff in the side of the mountain and uncovered thousands of Eocene fossils, mostly of plants, though bird tracks have also been found. The debris field itself is a jumble of boulders and timber and the best place to look for fossils, though it requires some serious scrambling, but the fossils can be found all over the mountain and we looked in several other places as well. The area is layers of soft carbonaceous shale which quickly weathers and crumbles and Chuckanut sandstone. The fossils are found in both with inclusions of coal as well. This is a photo of a whole palm frond and pieces of other fronds in shale. The rock is around four feet long and several feet wide, to give an indication of scale, and many of these fossils are massive.