Descriptions of Places

Harriman State Park encompasses a strangely shaped, rugged but not quite mountainous upland in the southeastern New York. Part of the Hudson Highlands section of the Crystalline Appalachian Mountains, its bedrock is a block of ancient, highly deformed precambrian gneisses and other metamorphic rocks, with some granite intrusive structures mixed in. A long history of uplift, erosion and glaciation has shaped it into a peneplain: the tops of the hills are generally flat slabs of bedrock 1100-1300 feet above sea level, higher north and the lower south. Glacial scouring has left little to no soil on the summits. In between them is a gnarly landscape of short but steep cliffs and mountain slopes, talus-strewn valleys, fast-running streams, and swamps. View east from Claudius Smith Den The central and southeastern parts of the park are an area of relatively high elevation and low relief.  Extensive wetlands occur in bottomlands as high as 1000 feet, surrounded by gentle slopes. Many

The Columbia River's watershed includes much of the Northwestern US, and some of Canada, stretching inland to the Continental Divide. It runs south through Washington, and, turning west, it forms the state boundary with Oregon. At Portland, it runs north for a bit, rare for a major river on the North American continent, before turning out to sea. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, its channel slices through volcanic rock, some in the Columbia Plateau of eastern Oregon and Washington, and thousands of feet in the gorge through the Cascade Mountains, just east of Portland.  Its major tributary, the Snake River, traverses a rugged area near the intersection of Idaho, Oregon and Washington, where several granite mountain ranges are interspersed with basalt flows thousands of feet thick. The river forms Hells Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America. Water level is well below 2000 feet here, while the peaks of the Seven Devils range directly on the canyon's east rim a