The exact nature of the evidence at the Sanpoil Valley locality is not made clear by Pardee. Perhaps the contrast between ice abraded lower slopes of Mt. Chilimas, in secs. 4 and 5, T.31N., R.33E. (placename location), and the little-abraded or non-abraded upper slopes, which, nevertheless, carry a few erratics, was meant. If so, the contrast does not, in the writer’s opinion, constitute evidence for or against two distinct glacial stages. Flint 1937 Drift Paper
A terse line from a survey notebook, and the flood evidence it set down.
These till deposits help define the maximum extent of Cordilleran Ice Sheet lobes into the Columbia Plateau. Modern dating techniques have refined the timing of ice advances, showing they correlate with periods when flooding would have been blocked by ice, adding complexity to the flood chronology.
Active: 1925-1976 (Spokane-region glacial mapping 1935-1938) Affiliation: Yale University (faculty 1925-1976, full professor 1945) Key paper: Flint, R.F. (1938). "Origin of the Cheney-Palouse Scabland Tract." Geological Society of America Bulletin 49(3): 461-524.
Flint conducted three field seasons of glacial mapping in the Spokane region beginning in 1935 and was, for the first two decades after Bretz's 1923 paper, the most prominent skeptic of catastrophic flooding. His 1938 paper argued the scablands were cut by ordinary glacial meltwater operating over long durations, an interpretation that delayed acceptance of Bretz's hypothesis until Pardee's 1942 paper made the catastrophic source unavoidable. Flint's larger contribution to flood-corridor geology was methodological: his 1947 textbook Glacial Geology and the Pleistocene Epoch (and its 1957 and 1971 revisions) became the standard reference that defined how the Cordilleran Ice Sheet's southern margin, ice-dam configurations, and lobate retreat were mapped across the Pacific Northwest. He helped establish the Yale Geochronometric Laboratory and brought radiocarbon dating into glacial stratigraphy. He died of a stroke in 1976.
Source: Richard Foster Flint - Wikipedia; GSA Memorial, Stephen Porter
Flood-extent overlay shows the maximum reach of the Missoula Floods.
One of more than 1,800 surveyed sites. Plotted together, the field record is the map that proved the flood.
View on the interactive map Cinematic timeline · 3D flood · every captured siteA panorama from the spot the entry describes, looking out the way the surveyor saw it.
From the air, the feature in the note reads as part of the larger flood landscape it belongs to.
A photogrammetry model of a key specimen at the site, the evidence the line of notes rests on.