Sheppards Dell 2

 

 

 Sheppards Dell is a nice little spot that not a lot of people go to – they’re missing one of the lower key waterfalls here, but it’s alright by me; more tranquility for me.  I go there a lot during the rest of the year; I hadn’t realized that the falls in Sheppards Dell are as large as they are.

That whiteness?  All ice.

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Unlike Multnomah Falls, where the water plunges over a five hundred foot cliff, Sheppards Dell makes it way down in stages – here is the lower section running down into the river bottoms below past the train tracks.

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There is a viewing platform, about halfway down the falls course down the gorge:

Sometimes when the weather’s oppressively hot, I have seen people bring lawn chairs here and stay, cooled by the mist from the falls as it rushes by on it’s way to the Pacific.

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Here on the platform, you get a good look at the water ice flowing by:

It’s not so apparent in the photo, but in Real Life, water – running water – flowed over and through the ice here, catching on the twigs and brush and making icy spikes out of them.

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Someone asked me if these falls ever freeze completely up – and I have to say "I don’t know".  Water is relentless in finding it’s own level.  If liquid, it flows.  If it’s ice, it flows – slower,  but it still flows.

Ice dams on the waters of the Columbia formed in Montana, 40 some thousand years ago, holding an estimated Trillion acre-feet of water (an acre-foot of water will cover an acre of area one foot deep) – in short, a whole hell of a lot of water.  The ice dams broke, repeatedly, releasing floods the likes of which have never been seen by modern people.  Boulders the size of houses were carried by the waters from MONTANA, more than 800 miles, to become so-called "erratics"  here – rocks from somewhere else.  Portland’s site was covered by up to 128 feet of water – even Big Red, the US Banktower, would have barely been above the water.

Those repeated ‘Missoula floods" scoured the Columbia Rriver’s channel and formed The Columbia River Gorge that we see today.  Water is the most powerful agent of change on the planet.

What happens if the waterfalls completely ice up?   That water would be backed up until it flowed over whatever obstacle was in it’s way.  Solid or liquid, water flows.

It’s Gravity.

 

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