Ricketts Glen | 30 Dec 2011

This video presents images captured during a hike along Kitchen Creek in Pennsylvania's Ricketts Glen State Park. Rickett's Glen is renowned for its more than twenty waterfalls located along two branches of Kitchen Creek. Kitchen Creek and its waterfalls spill over the escarpment of the Allegheny Front in north central Pennsylvania. At ninety-two feet, the highest falls in Ricketts Glen State Park is Ganoga Falls (not shown in the video).

Because of icy conditions, the trail along Kitchen Creek was officiallly closed on December 30th. Disregarding the official notices tacked on a post at the trailhead, myself a few other rule-breakers went ahead and hiked along the safer parts of the trail. The temperature on the day of this hike rose to about 40 deg. Fahrenheit. Evidence of melting (dripping icicles, etc) can be seen throughout the video.


Waterfalls form where a stream -- incising into its landscape -- encounters a hard resistant rock bed or formation. The third falls in the video (Sheldon Reynolds) is located in a bowl-like, rock-cliff amphitheater. This geomorphological configuration reminded me of the underfit streams and waterfalls of the Columbia Plateau's Channeled Scablands where at the close of the Wisconsin Ice Age thousands of years ago a vast flood swept across the land surface carving out its network of channels and coulees. I wonder if anyone has attempted to invesitgate a similar hypothesis with respect to the formation of the waterfalls in Ricketts Glen along the Allegheny Front. The Wisconsin ice sheet margin was in the Ricketts Glen vicinity. If pro-glacial lake deposits have been identified to the north of Ricketts Glen, my hypothesis may have some merit.

The parent material for the soils in this forested area is glacial till, which can be seen in the video in several of the stream-side soil exposures.

The first falls in the video is Adams Falls (not labeled onscreen).

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Ricketts
• Glen
• Luzerne
• County
• Pennsylvania
• waterfalls
• hydrology
• streams
• fluvial
• geomorphology
• glacial
• ice
• flow
• hike

[DaHonestAbe]

Yeesh. I'm so glad to know you're alive Bruce. Love the video. It reminds me of Gooseberry Falls here in Minnesota, up north. Great stuff.

[bapyou]

@DaHonestAbe

Hello Abe. Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Warning: Install Windows 7 on your hard drive at your peril. XP video editor files are incompatible with the new 7 video editing program. Microsoft is a suck-ass company staffed by pimple-assed, brainless dolts. You heard it here first.

Chingada tu madre, Bill Gates!

[davidsquall351]

Man Its looks chilly there. They are actually having some winter temps :) Ricketts glen looks like a great place with no crowds when you were there.

[bapyou]

@davidsquall351 Hello David.

Read my video description. Officially the trail was closed to casual hikers. A notice at the trailhead said 'Registered ice cimbers with crampons only allowed.' But myself and several other rule-breakers went ahead and walked the trails until it got too icy.

I was in Pennsylvania for the holidays. This past Tuesday night the temperature went down to 12 F. That's freeze-your-ass-off weather.

(singing) "I left my asssss, in Penn-syl-van-ia..."

[steintanz]

beautiful valley there - thx a lot!