Vantage, WA

For the 13,000 or so years before Frenchman Coulee became a wildly popular destination for Northwest rock climbers, a striking formation of basalt spires stood as a graceful monument to the astonishing power of water and ice. The massive pillars are still here. It’s just that on any warm day, and many cold ones as well, fit and well-equipped people are attaching themselves to these forty-foot walls of stone.

At first sight it’s hard to trust what you’re seeing. Known as “The Feathers,” this formation of exposed basalt crystals barely withstood a succession of devastating floods. From the air, it looks as though a creature with jaws the size of the Rose Bowl has taken two bites from the coulee’s upper terrace. The Feathers somehow survived as a gently curving causeway between the bite marks. There are places where you can easily walk from one side to the other, stepping through gaps between the massive crystals.

What unfolds beneath The Feathers is a deep, bicameral gouge in the earth. The gaping crevasse in the bedrock was created as rampaging, late-Pleistocene flood waters burst out of what is now called the Quincy Basin, a broad area—well over 1,000 square miles—that encompasses most of Grant County. At its exit, just north of what is now Vantage, Wash., Frenchman Coulee functioned as a giant nozzle, directing the flood waters at a 90 degree angle across the Columbia River, slamming with stunning violence into the base of the Colockum Hills. The result can be seen in the magnificent gorge at Vantage, with steep and sheer basalt walls, and from the high ridge east of the river, and in long views with layered dimensions to the north, west and south.