Discussion: Washington State LIDAR Images

From the article:

In Washington State, the land sweeps and swirls, rises and buckles. It’s a dramatic enough landscape when seen with the human eye, but the green vegetation that covers the land is also hiding its secrets. In 2015, the state’s legislature asked the Department of Natural Resources to start mapping the entire state using Lidar technology, which can penetrate through the trees to image the shape of the earth below.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/washington-s...

Those images are amazing.

The mima mounds look like they would make for a fiendishly challenging orienteering area.

SE corner of the last image is mapped. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--bgyzpKn0N4/VMXL6wG-qEI/...

The mima mounds are in a 2.5 km^2 piece of public land(with an adjacent sportsmen's club that might make for good parking), just over an hour from Seattle. I wonder if permission for orienteering would be possible.

I never heard of the Mina Mounds, but I am duly impressed. However, and I can’t believe I’m saying it—they may be too much of a good thing.

Mima Mounds is really cool terrain. Last we were there, there was a "thou shalt not step off the trail" rule in place. I believe it's also home to a highly endangered butterfly. But yes, it ranked up there on our "wouldn't it be cool to O here" list...

For what it's worth, based on terrain view and satellite view, the mounds appear to extend a bit beyond the Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve, such as across much of the Thurston County Miniature Aircraft Association land. Maybe not enough for an event by itself, but perhaps with adjacent land like that NW of the Mima Falls Trailhead parking. But anyway, neat to look at all the various interesting terrain types. It makes me curious about all the unique terrain that may be lurking elsewhere, given that these images are from just one American state.

We in CascadeOC have a map in work of the "giant ripple marks" on the west bank of the Columbia River in the last image. One unique obstacle involved is that for our purposes the area is essentially inaccessible from the west, so we would likely need to commission the Good Ship Cascade and ferry folks from the resort across the river.

Here's a video with some nice footage and geological explanation of the area: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH8JEKBvz5w

Re: mima mounds

The mounds aren't limited to only that one area, as you can find them in many places around the state.

In fact, there are several small plateaus of mima mounds on the orienteering map of Fishtrap Lake, so if you've ever been there (eg: 2010 US Long Champs), you've likely encountered them.