Mike Doran

My family history is rooted in the Columbia Basin, the Okanogan country and the Yakima Valley.  So, I very much identify with central Washington.  I was born in Ephrata and raised in Soap Lake.  Growing up in the lower Grand Coulee, I often wondered about those large cliff walls on the west side of the coulee.  What are they about?  How did they get there?  And why are they located here and not over there?   Upon graduating from Central Washington State College I put in a career teaching high school Special Education and Alternative Education in Tacoma.  That was interrupted with a few years serving in the US Army.    As I was approaching retirement from teaching I wanted to learn more about the history and geology of the Pacific Northwest and our state of Washington.  It wasn’t long before I came across the videos, speakers and field trips being offered out of Ellensburg and Central Washington University.  I started attending those events and I was hooked.   Fast forward to the present day and I have found it extremely satisfying to be learning  answers to those boyhood questions—and ones I hadn’t even thought about asking.  I’m looking forward to learning and discovering even more. 

Field Trip to Dam Site

A field trip to Sandpoint ID to visit geologic sites related to the ice dam(s) that blocked the Clark Fork River and caused the formation of Glacial Lake Missoula multiple times is planned by the Glacial Lake Missoula Chapter in cooperation with Tony Lewis of the Coeur de Deluge Chapter.   An all day bus trip  is planned for April 18th followed by a car caravan to Farragut State Park and other downstream sites the next day.  Registration for the event  is limited and is being handled by the Montana Natural History Center at https://events.humanitix.com/ice-dam-field-trip Discounted lodging reservations are available at the Schweitzer Resort until March 18th.  For more information contact Sherry McLauchlan 406-207-7760.

Linda McCollum

We welcome Linda McCollum as the new president of the Cheney-Spokane Chapter. Linda is a professor emeritus with the Department of Geology at Eastern Washington University. Education & Employment: Linda completed her BS and MS at University of California at Davis in the early 1970’s, and then worked for a year as an assistant geophysicist for the California Geological Survey in Sacramento.  In 1980, she received her PhD from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and spent the 1979-1980 academic year teaching at Sul Ross State University in west Texas.  For the next three years, she headed up the Cordilleran Geological Survey in Reno, Nevada, which was an affiliate of Gulf Oil and Exploration Company, Houston, Texas. She joined the geology faculty at EWU in September 1983, taking the position of petroleum geologist.  She taught upper division and graduate courses, including petroleum geology, micropaleontology, paleoecology, clay mineralogy, and spring field camp, in addition to supervising Masters theses.  In 1987, Ernie Gilmour went into the university administration for several years, so she took over his courses in invertebrate paleontology and historical geology, and later, when John Buchanan became heavily involved in the graduate program, she took over the stratigraphy course for several years. When Bill Steele retired, she took over his environmental geology course.  Thus, she ended up almost exclusively with required undergraduate courses by the time she became departmental chair in September 1993, serving two 4 year terms. After the graduate program was terminated due to university budget cuts, Linda developed an integrative studies course on the history of mining in the Pacific Northwest, and an international studies course on world resources and population.  She also taught the Earth Science education methods course.  During a couple of summers in the mid-1990’s, she teamed up with then-Provost Jim Hoffman to teach a field course on dinosaurs, in which they participated in digs on the Colorado Plateau and along the Rocky Mountain front in Montana.  This course was aimed primarily at the K-12 teachers.  She had to cut back a little on course offerings during her years as departmental chair from 1993-2001.  She taught 23 different courses during her 25-year tenure, which reflects the ever-changing nature of the geology profession, coupled with the program demands and faculty availability. Research: Her research interests were initially in early Paleozoic ecology and faunas, stratigraphy, and tectonics.  She published peer-reviewed papers on Devonian biostratigraphy and paleoecology in New York State; Cambrian lithostratigraphy, describing ten new geologic formations in Utah and Nevada; and has described early Middle Cambrian trilobite faunas from Nevada, California, and South China.  She has authored or coauthored over a dozen peer-reviewed scientific papers and presented over three dozen abstracts and talks or poster sessions.  In the last decade, her focus has been on the Ice Age floods, particularly within the confines of glacial Lake Columbia. During the last few years, she and her husband Mike have completed geologic mapping of ten 7.5-minute quadrangles, which cover about 500 square miles, westward from Cheney to Edwall and northward to Wellpinit on the Spokane Tribal Reservation.  She has located water wells in these quads and matched them up with existing DOE water well reports, in order to characterize the groundwater aquifer system underlying the West Plains.  As a member of the Water Resources Inventory Area (WRIA) 54, administered by Spokane County Water Resources Division, she published a report on the West Plains aquifer system. Grants: Linda’s research was funded by EWU and National Science Foundation grants and contract through WRIA 54 totaling over half a million dollars. In recognition of her academic expertise, she was elected to represent the United States by the International Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy. Retirement & beyond: Linda became a founding member of the Cheney Spokane Chapter in 2004 and joined the board of directors in 2017.  She was elected President in December, 2023. Other interests: She had taught at the equestrian center at UC Davis during her student years, and for recreation, she still enjoys horseback riding. She also does quite a bit of hiking. Lately she has gotten the most enjoyment out of gardening and playing around with her cats. Updated December 15, 2023

Don Chadbourne: IAFI Board Member

Don Chadbourne: IAFI Board Member I have degrees in geology from the University of Wisconsin and civil engineering from the University of Wyoming. I worked as a well site geologist on oil drilling rigs throughout the Rocky Mountain region and then as a civil engineer for the Washington State DOT. The last job brought me to Spokane. My first IAFI Field Trip was in 2010 with Gene Kiver and Bruce Bjornstad on the Cheney-Palouse scabland. Subsequent field trips and hikes throughout the region, with Mike and Linda McCollum, Michael Hamilton and others, taught me a lot about the geology of the area and the Ice Age Floods. I have been a board member with the Cheney-Spokane Chapter since 2019 and am now the Chapter treasurer. I lead hikes on some of the local trails, describing the geologic features and sharing the flood story.

Lorrie DeKay

Lorrie DeKayMembership Manager I’ve been fortunate to have an ‘in house’ geologist for over 40 years. Lloyd’s career enabled us to live in and explore much of the US, Africa and Europe. With retirement came one last move, to Washington State, which we chose for many reasons, not the least of which was its geology. Access to diverse ecosystems within a day’s drive of our home in White Salmon makes our expedition logistics a breeze (often gusty). I’ve enjoyed IAFI trips to Missoula, the Palouse, and Dry Falls, and help edit Lloyd’s IAFI work. With my work on the Columbia River Gorge Commission wrapping up after 2 terms, I now look forward to being more participatory in IAFI as Membership Manager.

Gary Kleinknecht

Gary Kleinknecht: IAFI Board Vice-President After growing up in the Tri-Cities area I attended Washington State University, BS in Psychology, and the University of South Carolina, MEd in Secondary Social Studies Education.  I am retired in the Tri-Cities area after 40 years in high school classrooms. I first heard of the Ice Age Floods around 1980 and began incorporating the topic into my Washington History course.  I learned of and joined the IAFI in 1999 and I served as the organization’s president from 2004 until 2010.  I was also the founding president of the Lake Lewis Chapter of the IAFI. During the past fifteen or so years I have led numerous floods field trips for the Columbia Reach Interpretive Center in Richland and taught floods classes for the Kennewick School District’s Community Education Program. I am currently serving as Education Director with a citizen science nonprofit group which is excavating a 17,500 year-old Columbian mammoth. The skeleton is buried in Ice Age Floods graded beds near the Tri-Cities.

Gary Ford

Gary Ford: IAFI Board President   I have been a member of the Ice Age Floods Institute since 2001 and was a founding member of the Cheney-Spokane Chapter. I was president of the Cheney-Spokane Chapter for five years and have been IAFI president since 2013. I have a B.S. and M.S. in Earth Science and a PhD in Soil Science from Montana State University. I mapped over a million acres of glaciated landscapes. I have taught university classes, been an extension educator and lead Forest Service land management teams. I find all this experience useful in leading the IAFI. My main goals as president of the IAFI are to continue to “grow” our membership, be sure we tell the floods story accurately to as many groups and individuals as possible, to work with the National Park Service on the development of the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail, and to manage the institute’s human and fiscal resources in the most efficient and transparent manner possible.

Tayler Welch

Tayler Welch: IAFI Assistant Treasurer I was born and raised in Tri-Cities, Washington. I started college at CBC where I decided to go into accounting, eventually graduating from WSU with my Bachelors in Accounting. I began working for Monte Nail in 2009 and Ice Age Floods was my first client job. I originally handled membership renewals along with financial activity, but now only handle the finance portion.

Denis Felton

Denis Felton: Lower Grand Coulee Chapter President I was born and raised in Spokane, WA, where I spent many years during high school and college working part time at a plant nursery. My secondary education combines a mixture of machine shop studies, natural resources, general studies and one year in criminal justice at EWU and the Law Enforcement academy. In the summer of 1983, I was hired as a park aide at the Liberty Lake Regional Park with Spokane County. In 1986 I was hired as a park aide at Riverside State Park in Spokane, and after being introduced to the Park Ranger position I was hooked. The winter of 1987, I attended the Parks Law Enforcement academy in Everett, WA, a requirement to become a Ranger. Following the academy, I landed a seasonal Park Ranger position with the National Park Service and spent the next 3 years working on the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area as a Law Enforcement Ranger. In 1990, I returned to Washington State Parks at Riverside State Park as a Park Ranger and in the spring of 2004, I was promoted to the Park Manager of Sun Lakes / Dry Falls State Park. In 2012, I became the Area Manager of the Coulee Corridor Area State Parks where I became involved with the Coulee Corridor Consortium (Coulee Corridor National Scenic Byway group). I also became involved with the Lower Grand Coulee Chapter of the Ice Age Floods Institute (IAFI), where I currently serve as the president of the Chapter. This May will mark 18 years for me in the Coulee Corridor Area State Parks and I still love going to work every day. I married my beautiful wife Carrie, a Home Healthcare Aide in 1988, and we have 2 adult children, Christine, 29, and Katie, 27. I also stay busy as a volunteer firefighter for Grant County Fire District 7 and am active as the Vice President and Chief Shop Steward of our Parks Statewide Local Union.

Dale Lehman

Dale Lehman: Puget Lobe Chapter President The geologic landscape east of the Cascades has always fascinated me.  I was introduced to the Ice Age Floods story by Mike Folsom, Dale Stradling and Gene Kiver while I was an undergraduate at Eastern Washington University.  Since that time, I have made a personal commitment to sharing the story with other people, beginning with my  own 101 students and continuing after retirement with my involvement with the Puget Lobe Chapter of IAFI.