Lake Lenore Caves

At the end of the last Ice Age, a lobe of glacial ice dammed a river in what is now western Montana and backed up an enormous lake, Glacial Lake Missoula. Again and again the ice dam failed and released the entire lake at once, sending walls of water racing across eastern Washington in the events geologists call the Missoula floods.

One of those flood paths was the Grand Coulee. The churning water plucked fastest at the columns of basalt, prying them loose and eroding pockets into the cliff walls. The Lake Lenore Caves were scoured from those basalt colonnades, which is why they line up along the rock in a row rather than sitting deep in the ground. It is a landscape written entirely by moving water, and it is now part of the congressionally designated Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail.

When the floods finally stopped and the coulee dried, the caves became useful. Talus slopes built up below them and made easy paths up to the openings, and Plateau peoples used the shelters for overnight camps and storage for at least five thousand years. Hunters and gatherers from villages along the Columbia and its tributaries came through this desert corridor, and the caves gave them a dry place out of the wind.

This is living heritage, not just an archaeological curiosity. The caves are still used today for certain Native American religious ceremonies, so visit with the same respect you would bring to any place of ongoing cultural importance, and leave everything as you found it.

The caves are one stop in a much larger flood landscape. Just up the coulee is Dry Falls, the scarred headwall of what was once a waterfall far larger than any on earth today, and the string of alkali lakes below, Lake Lenore, Soap Lake, and the others, fills the coulee floor where the floods left basins. The whole drive is a lesson in what happens when a continent-sized flood passes through.

The desert here is high and dry, sagebrush and bunchgrass over black rock, and the light at either end of the day turns the basalt walls gold and violet. It feels remote and a little severe, which is much of its appeal.

The coulee is a raptor corridor. Watch the cliffs and the sky for hawks, falcons, and golden eagles riding the updrafts, and listen for the pikas and marmots among the talus. Yellow-bellied marmots sun themselves on the rocks, and in the alkali lakes below the water is too mineral for most fish but rich in the tiny life that draws migrating birds.

Spring is the sweet spot, when the desert briefly greens and wildflowers dot the slopes before the summer heat sets in. Summer days can be scorching and shadeless, so early morning is best. Fall brings cool, clear air and long light, and winter turns the coulee stark and often snow-dusted, beautiful but cold and windy.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.