How Saddle Rock Reveals Wenatchee’s Volcanic Past

Saddle Rock – an iconic pair of large rock pinnacles looming above Wenatchee. 

Seattle’s Public Broadcasting Station – KCTS 9 has an academic geology present known as Nick on the Rocks. The host, Nick Zentner, is a professor of Geology at Central Washington College in Ellensburg.

How did Saddle Rock seem above Wenatchee?

Saddle Rock and the opposite pinnacles in larger Wenatchee outcome from volcanic exercise.

It’s believed to have formed 44 million years in the past, older than the well-known Cascade volcanoes.

It’s fascinating to know that Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Baker are all younger than the formations at Saddle Rock. 

What sort of rock makes up Saddle Rock?

Nick explained that the fabric that makes up the long-lasting pinnacles is just not typical of volcanic rock. The rocks of Saddle Rock are rhyolite—pink volcanic rocks with little white chunks made up of smoky quartz and crystals. 

Rhyolite is stiff, sticky lava, so every pinnacle is a rhyolite dome. Nick Zentner’s origin story for the rhyolite could be very descriptive.

‘A squirt of very toothpaste-like magma. It was a part of a really explosive volcanic system.’ – Nick Zentner, CWU Geology professor.

 

Was there a Tremendous Volcano beneath Wenatchee?

The 44 million-year-old rhyolite that makes up Saddle Rock has the identical story as the various outcrops above floor and visual within the space. Wenatchee Dome, Citadel Rock, Black Thumb, and Rooster Comb have the same rhyolite rock.

The older Cascades erupted above the floor because of a violent pyroclastic ash stream.  Nick explains that rhyolite outcrops in all probability got here from some supervolcano quite than a composite cone volcano. The pinnacles of rhyolite lava have been as soon as underground fingers of magma that labored their method up via mushy sandstones. A few of them obtained to the floor and exploded violently.

Geologists like Nick are nonetheless attempting to work out the main points.

Watch Nick inform this story right here, and take a look at the various episodes of Nick on the Rocks that spin yarns concerning the diverse and fascinating geology within the nice Pacific Northwest.