When did the Punchbowl Falls beach disappear?

[chameleon]

Great idea Tom! I might try that with this punchbowl pic. It's pretty exceptional and the detail is great.

Also, I found a date on the back now...8/30/21. Don't know what it really represents. It would be a long shot that it was the date it was taken. It would make sense though...it is low water and all.

Also, here's a pic of this scene I took a couple years ago. It's higher water granted. I've swam that bowl often though, usually in low water. The area where the beach was is still the shallowest spot, but nonetheless is 3 feet or so below water. And to get to it, you have to swim. The rest of the bowl is almost all volcanic - solid rock even on the shoreline.

[CuriousGorgeGuide]

Great topic Chameleon! Just thought I'd toss this pic into the mix for those who haven't seen/known about it yet. I've never been able to figure out why the Chicago-based band used an orange-ized Punchbowl for their back album cover. Glad they did though...you can imagine my surprise as i was flipping thru a box of my book-printer's old albums one day in his print warehouse/ storage junk pile....and...."HEY...that's Punchbowl!!!!"
Always another surprise in our Gorge!

Styx II.jpg (38.66 KiB) Viewed 3109 times

[Charley]

I'm happy to see that even back then people were building those rock cairns all over the place

I can't quite believe my eyes. I would have erroneously guessed that the phenomenon of stacking rocks would have dated back to the 60's. So I'm more than a little surprised to see that they date back so far. I'd always thought they were made in a spirit of 60's era nature-spirituality or some such thing.
And if I might make a confession: I find them quite distracting from the natural environment (especially when there are dozens of stacks in popular places) and have been known to kick them over. Not to hijack the thread, but I feel fairly justified in that these are unnecessary traces not in keeping with the modern leave no trace ethic. Maybe someone can educate me as to the real inspiration behind these stacks, and tell me why I shouldn't kick them over.

[retired jerry]

The Two Scrooges - Tom and Charly - kicking over innocent rock cairns - boo, hiss...

Well, maybe you have a point if they're all over the place

[Grannyhiker]

Some cairns are there to mark trails, in open meadows or above timberline. Please don't kick those over!

[Charley]

Some cairns are there to mark trails, in open meadows or above timberline. Please don't kick those over!

I hope you're kidding. I'm only talking about these stacks of rocks in creekbeds, not cairns on high trails.

[Splintercat]

Zach, back to your original question (and I vaguely recall posting this before, so apologies if I'm repeating myself), my hunch on the gravel bars in the old photos is that they're more a reflection of the burned-over watershed in the early 1900s, and likely a much larger debris load moving through the stream system than we see in today's stabilized watershed. My two cents, anyway.

BTW, I had that Styx album... so, dating myself a bit there... groan..!

-Tom :lol

[chameleon]

Cool aside Scott! In the Eagle Creek chapter of my waterfall book, I make mention of how Eagle Creek has historically been an inspiration to artists. That's neat that Punchbowl made an album cover.

Tom - That's good thinkin on the burn. You're probably right. We (as a species) are certainly culpable for some insane fires in the decades preceding the trail. New, small, dense forests (that sprang up after we hewed down all the ancient oldgrowth), and sloppy, tragically unregulated timber harvesting practices, led to terrible blazes in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The Yacolt burn is a good example. That certainly would have destablized slopes, increased slides into streams, etc.