Large mounds

beag · Post by **beag** » January 23rd, 2016, 8:22 pm

Have anyone any idea what a large group of earthen mounds in the woods would be. If they are not natural what then.They vary in size from 6x8x8 to approx 8x10x16 feet, elevation 2000feet. It seems like a special place to me with views to the East of the rising sun and views to the West of the setting sun. I know the Celts worshipped the Heavens but I never heard of any Celts in this area. Back East mounds are burial places.

Aimless · Post by **Aimless** » January 24th, 2016, 10:28 am

If they are covered in ants, then they are anthills! Do you have photos?

Chase · Post by **Chase** » January 24th, 2016, 11:03 am

Aimless wrote:If they are covered in ants, then they are anthills! Do you have photos?

Ants are always looking for good views of the rising sun.

beag · Post by **beag** » January 24th, 2016, 1:29 pm

They are not anthills. I've seen dozens of those. The Mounds are much larger and very numerous scattered over approx 5 acres. No bear signs and another curious thing almost no brush growing on them.

Peabody · Post by **Peabody** » January 24th, 2016, 1:48 pm

Possibly the scar of a fallen giant? After the wood has decayed a mound of soil would be left behind.

derwoodynck · Post by **derwoodynck** » January 24th, 2016, 2:24 pm

Do they seem recent or old? If they are old they could have been the product of an earthquake affecting loose soil, at least that is a theory about some unexplained mounds such as those on Rowena.

Lurch · Post by **Lurch** » January 25th, 2016, 11:23 am

Photos would help quite a bit..

forester · Post by **forester** » January 30th, 2016, 9:52 pm

Pics or it didn't happen. I'm a big fan of pictures of mounds...

Don Nelsen · Post by **Don Nelsen** » February 1st, 2016, 11:36 am

I was curious about these mounds beag found so got a little info from him as to general area and trekked out there yesterday and found them. It's just as he described and really surprised me. I've explored extensively in the area and had not encountered them. In fact, I'd hiked to within about 300 feet of the area in the past, but in a fairly dense forest, had missed seeing them.

The area with the mounds is exclusively conifers, roughly triangular in shape and covers an area of about 3 acres. Elevation is from about 1750' to about 1850'.

Here are a few photos. I think they are man-made during along-ago logging operations but why they are there and for what purpose eludes me. What do you think?:

dn

Lurch · Post by **Lurch** » February 1st, 2016, 2:42 pm

I believe that would be a text book example of 'pit-and-mound' topography. Like Peabody mentioned, windthrown trees seem like the best bet. It could either be from a single large event a few hundred years ago, or a progression of many hundreds of years. Are the mounds on the down wind side?

The lack of trees could either be explained by simple time and decomp, or a fire rolling through causing the root ball to collapse after the burn

If you'd like to fully nerd out you can read a paper about the "Longevity of treethrown microtopography" http://geo.msu.edu/extra/schaetzl/PDFs/ ... ollmer.pdf

Oregon Hikers

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