That pure uncut glacial shit

If you live in the Pacific Northwest and ever wondered how the varied terrain got to be the way it is, this video is a concise, fascinating 18 minute deep-dive into the last ice age from 17,000-10,000 years ago and how today we can still see clues all over to explain how it all went down.

Let me state upfront: this video is extremely my shit.

A couple years back, I stumbled onto this geology professor from Central Washington state doing lectures and informational videos on YouTube. I was instantly hooked, not only because I kinda minored in Geology while doing degrees in Soil and Environmental stuff in college, but also because I see a lot of weird rock formations where I live and I probably found this guy from searching to find out why things look the way they do in Oregon.

Lately, this professor has focused on zoom talks and livestreams of his upper division geology classes, and that stuff is pretty dense subject matter, but if you go deep in his video upload history you'll find stuff like this new Lake Missoula talk, which is aimed at everyone wondering how glaciers, lakes, and ice dams completely transformed the Pacific Northwest.

I've been a huge fan of Montana ever since I went to Glacier National Park about ten years ago, and I've also seen many of the road cuts he mentions with geologic anomalies. At one point he even shows a photo of the "glacial erratic" rock the size of a VW Bug that sits about ten miles south of me, which happened because a chunk of ice with the Montana rock sitting in it dropped to the ground 1,000 miles away from its origin as the ice melted away about 10,000 years ago.

A nearly 20 minute video on geology might sound pretty dry, but I found myself saying "no WAY!" and "holy crap, that's what that thing is?!" several times as I was transfixed throughout the whole thing.

(honestly, if you watch this just to fall asleep to, that's cool too, he's got a soothing voice and it's probably a goldmine of afternoon nap material to cue up on your TV the next time you crash out on the couch)