by Pat Jaquith
pat@westvalleynaturalists.org
Snow bales? Ice needles? Hoar frost? Snow serpents? Pink snow? From dawn to dark, winter weather provides us with lots to marvel at.
Continue Reading →Winter Wonders
Category: Geography
Geology Field Trip
by Dr. Lex Blood, Community Activist, Conservationist, Professor Emeritus/Flathead Valley Community College
To take a virtual tour of the West Valley area, click here
The West Valley Naturalists sponsored a geology field trip in May 2014. Dr. Lex Blood led this field trip; for more than 40 years Lex Blood has served as Flathead Valley geologist, geographer, educator, conservationist. After a brief introduction we car-pooled and explained the “story behind the landscape” as we traveled through the West Valley area. For background information on the geology of the Flathead Valley please visit: http://www.flatheadwatershed.org/natural_history/geology.shtml
Continue Reading →Flathead Valley Water Resources
by Skip Via
skip@westvalleynaturalists.org
To take a virtual tour of the West Valley area, click here
Mike Koopal, Executive Director of the Whitefish Lake Institute, pointed us to some exceptional resources for learning more about the Flathead Valley watershed and the numerous lakes and streams that make up some of the most beautiful areas of the west valley area and the rest of Montana.
Continue Reading →The Mystery of Tally Lake
by Mike Koopal, Executive Director, Whitefish Lake Institute
mike@whitefishlake.org
To take a virtual tour of the West Valley area, click here
(Ed. note: The Mystery of Tally Lake was presented to the West Valley Naturalists meeting on March 2, 2020. We are grateful to Mike for allowing us to post it here.)
Continue Reading →Basins and Ranges
by Skip Via
skip@westvalleynaturalists.org
To take a virtual tour of the West Valley area, click here
If you have driven around western Montana, you may have the feeling that you’re always in a valley between two mountain ranges. There’s a reason for that. It’s called Basin and Range Topography.
Continue Reading →All About Argillite
by Skip Via
skip@westvalleynaturalists.org
To take a virtual tour of the West Valley area, click here
You see it everywhere in the valley–lining the bottom of creek beds, along hiking trails, layered throughout road cuts, on the shores surrounding Tally Lake, in the cliffs around Flathead Lake, piled at the corners of plowed fields, covering fireplace hearths and floors, in the pavement of many area roads and parking lots, and often in your yard when you are trying to dig a new garden bed (especially if you live on a glacial drumlin, as I do). It’s the predominant rock in Glacier National Park a few miles to our east, as shown in this Google Earth image, below:
It’s argillite, the colorful rocks and tiered strata that were formed during the Precambrian period well over 500 million years ago–and western Montana is one of the best places in the world to see it.
Continue Reading →