I was looking for a hike to stretch my legs on a drive from Seattle to the Wallowas. Using the Hike Finder map I found this gem in the Tri-Cities.
Candy Mountain was recently saved from the sprawl of housing development by a locals group. Great views and good geology has been preserved😃
The hike is short, and this time of year there are no wildflowers. The shrub steppe retains it’s charms though. Smoky conditions limited views a bit but we were entertained by all the geology lessons.
In short the Missoula floods of the last ice age backed up in this area behind a series of hills (Rattlesnake, Red, Candy, Badger, etc). This backup formed Lewis Lake in matter of days and drained almost as quickly through Wallula Gap. The lake was so big it backed up the Snake and Yakama River basins leaving telltale glacial erratics and Colombian Mammoth carcasses stranded along a bathtub ring of sorts from the lake.
Enough of the science lesson. It was a perfect one hour plus leg stretch if you’re driving through the TriCities area.
Comments