Avalanche Creek gorge red rock
— the red rock the creek wore through.
Not only on a wall.
“A narrow slot of red argillite where Avalanche Creek has worked its way through a rib of the Grinnell Formation. The Trail of the Cedars boardwalk crosses the gorge at a footbridge, looking down into clear green water moving fast over pink stone. The forest around it, western red cedar and western hemlock, is the easternmost stand of inland temperate rainforest in the United States.
Avalanche Creek gorge red rock, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Avalanche Creek gorge cuts through red and pink argillite of the Grinnell Formation, part of the Precambrian Belt Supergroup that underlies much of Glacier National Park. The creek drains Avalanche Lake, two miles upstream, and joins McDonald Creek below the gorge. The Trail of the Cedars boardwalk is a flat 0.8-mile loop and one of the most-visited short trails in the park. The gorge also serves as the trailhead for the 4.5-mile round-trip hike to Avalanche Lake.
The red argillite is roughly 1.4 billion years old, laid down as mudstone in shallow Precambrian seas and later metamorphosed by burial. The colour comes from oxidised iron within the sediment, similar in chemistry to terrestrial red beds elsewhere. The Grinnell Formation outcrops widely across Glacier, but the polished sculpted surfaces in the gorge are among the most accessible exposures. Avalanche Creek runs clear most of the year and turns turbid only during heavy spring melt or summer thunderstorm runoff.
The Avalanche Creek basin holds the easternmost stand of inland temperate rainforest in the contiguous United States. The grove contains western red cedars over 500 years old and western hemlock at the eastern limit of its range. Annual precipitation in the basin exceeds 100 inches. The microclimate is sustained by orographic lift off the Continental Divide and by cold air pooling along the creek. The result is a deep green understory of devil's club, queen's cup, and wild ginger.