Nick on the Rocks

Sitting right on the edge of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington, Beacon Rock shoots 800 feet straight up from the valley floor. While it’s made of the same type of rock as the gorge’s surrounding walls, it tells a much newer story.

Glacier Peak is Washington's most remote stratovolcano, towering high in the Cascade Mountains some 50 miles from the waters of Puget Sound. But in the not-so-distant past, eruptions from this volcano sent huge mudflows all the way down to the Skagit Flats - and it could happen again.

Just north of the famous Gorge Amphitheater are two enormous lake-filled canyons that appear to feed into the Columbia River. But the canyons of Potholes Coulee weren’t carved by rivers, and the lakes at the valley floor might not be so ancient after all.

Index granite was used to build the iconic Smith Tower in Seattle, and is known by climbers all over the world for its grippy quality. And while Mount Index consists mostly of the famous granite that shares its name, its peak is made of much older and more mysterious rock.

The town of Pateros, Washington, sits at the confluence of the Methow and Columbia Rivers in a landscape that has been dramatically shaped by ice and water over the past 20,000 years, including a terrace that mystifies geologists to this day.

From the hills and ridges that all run north to south to the huge freshwater lakes that define the region, the geography of Seattle is a direct result of a giant ice sheet that scoured the landscape just 16,000 years ago.

Sitting right on the edge of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington, Beacon Rock shoots 800 feet straight up from the valley floor. While it’s made of the same type of rock as the gorge’s surrounding walls, it tells a much newer story.

Towering walls of granite stand sentinel over Highway 20 at Washington Pass deep in the North Cascades. The surrounding peaks are made of two distinct types of granite that formed far away from each other before dramatically colliding in the Northwest.