1 66 /. HARLEN BRETZ 



ingly bowldery, granite is very abundant, kettles containing 

 lakelets and bogs are common, and the subsoil is typical Vashon 

 till. The margin of this bowldery drift may be traced about the 

 west and north of the Bald Hills from the Des Chutes to the 

 Nisqually River and is in places thrown into sharply defined ridges. 

 Occasionally the forest seems growing on one gigantic bowlder 

 heap. A preglacial valley descending to the northwest has been 

 dammed, giving rise to Little Bald Hill Lake, a picturesque body 

 of water in the heart of the wilderness. Another such valley has 

 three morainic ridges thrown across it at descending altitudes, a 

 marsh or alluvial flat lying behind each ridge. Pronounced relief 

 of the moraine on the north slope of the Bald Hills was found, but 

 the unbroken .forest pre vented satisfactory examination. 



The same difficulty of examination is presented by most of the 

 country from the Bald Hills west to Tenino. In general, the drift- 

 covered area bears the farms and roads, the region immediately 

 beyond the ice limit rising in rocky hills which constitute the divide 

 between the Des Chutes River and the Skookum Chuck. A trav- 

 erse across this divide found the moraine disposed in bowldery 

 ridges along the base of the hills with a marginal drainage channel 

 separating the frontal ridge from the bold rock hill slope. No 

 erratic material or evidence of ice action was found on the ascent 

 to the divide crest, the glacier of Puget Sound having succeeded 

 in barely reaching the northern base of the hill region. 



The town of Tenino is situated on an area of gravel outwash 

 lying immediately south of the moraine. The rock hills die away 

 toward the west just south of the town and glacial drainage escaped 

 southward to the lower Skookum Chuck through a broad, gravel- 

 filled valley. Glacial outwash was also carried westward from 

 Tenino toward Grand Mound and Gate to join the extensive 

 areas there outspread. 



The Skookum Chuck bears a train of glacial gravel which entered 

 it somewhere in the unsurveyed region of the Huckleberry Moun- 

 tains, presumably from Mt. Rainier's Pleistocene glaciers. - But 

 careful search revealed absolutely no granite or sedimentary meta- 

 morphics in this gravel for a distance of 6 miles along its course. 

 Only when the western limits of the rock hills were approached, 



