THE NORTHERN PACIFIC ROUTE. 183 
tude of 2,150 feet, whereas the old floor of the Yakima Valley, repre- 
sented by the tops of the hills above Easton, is 350 feet higher. It 
is clearly evident that for some reason the Kachess Valley has been 
deepened below that of Yakima River, and that the latter is now 
cutting a narrow trench in its old valley bottom in order to reduce its 
grade to that of the stream which it joins near Easton. These changes 
seem to be connected in some way with the occupation of the valleys 
by glacial ice, but the manner in which it has been accomplished has 
not been worked out. 
Both the Northern Pacific and St. Paul roads follow the river 
through the narrow gorge above Easton, where the stream boils and 
tumbles over the rocky ledges toward the open valley below. The 
sand and gravel carried down by the stream are constantly grinding 
away the hard rocks, but it is a slow process, and many generations 
will pass before the obstruction is removed. The narrow gorge is short, 
and beyond it the railway enters the relatively open valley above. 
As the Northern Pacific crosses the summit of the range near Stam- 
pede Pass, about 9 miles from Easton, it climbs at a steep grade. The 
St. Paul road, which is here on the right, crosses at Snoqualmie Pass, 
11 miles farther north. A short distance beyond Easton the railway 
enters the great mass of andesitic lava flows and tuffs that in this 
region make up the great bulk of the Cascade Range. 
From a scenic point of view the climb to the pass is not striking, for 
the traveler sees only rounded: mountain slopes thickly covered with 
timber and the broad valley equally well protected by a tangle of dense 
vegetation. It is reported that bowlders of granite and similar rocks 
have been found perched on the mountain sides from 1,200 to 1,700 
feet above the bottoms of the valleys. These indicate that at some 
early stage of the glacial epoch the glaciers were much more extensive 
than they were at a later stage when the moraines previously described 
were formed. 
One of the most striking features of the valley is the low pass on the 
right, leading to the upper end of Kachess Lake. This pass has an 
altitude of about 2,500 feet and doubtless was an outlet for either the 
drainage of the upper Yakima Valley or that of Kachess Valley, on 
the east. Its cutting and aband nt are doubtless connected with 
the trenching of the old valley of the Yakima above Easton, but the 
conditions which resulted in these changes have not been determined. 
This valley, like the two next east, is occupied by a lake (Keechelus 
Lake) which doubtless had its origin in the erosive action of the gla- 
cier that evidently lay for some time in the lake basin and built the 
moraines around its lower end. . Many beautiful views of Keechelus 
Lake may be obtained, either from the wagon road that follows the 
eastern bank or from the St. Paul Railway, which overlooks it on the 
west. (See Pl. XXV, p. 175.) 
