We traveled into the Washington State Desert Lands in spring to do early-season hikes for two weeks.    We drove through Osoyoos then south across the border through Omak and series of small towns following highways and secondary roads.    We camped at State Parks, then drove to trailheads for a good hike each day.   On one of those days we camped at Dry Falls and hiked the Umatilla Rock Trail.

Dry Falls is in the Columbia River scablands, a corridor that was eroded by the release of a giant lake behind an ice dam on the Columbia River in previous Ice Ages.    The successive waves of water and subsequent torrents scoured the area of trees, topsoil, and gravels, leaving a barren, dry landscape of volcanic rock hills, dotted with small pothole lakes.

The Umatilla Rock trail winds around  the rocky hills and volcanic rocks, passing small lakes under columned cliffs.

The hike involves a circumnavigation of Umatilla Rock, a narrow rock blade that passes below Dry Falls. This area lies midway along the 50-mile Grand Coulee—one of the longest and most spectacular chasms carved out by up to 100 gargantuan Ice Age floods.

The floods originated from sudden outbursts of ice-dammed Glacial Lake Missoula as recently as 15,000 years ago. The height of the Ice Age floodwaters (800 ft deep), shooting over Dry Falls at perhaps 60-70 mph, was nearly the height of Seattle’s 76-story Columbia Center-Washington State’s tallest building.

Washington Trails

We climbed to some viewpoints, covering about 8 km for a morning’s hike.

In the afternoon, we went for a second hike to explore the Lenore Caves (watch for another post).