Grand Coulee Columbia Rivers pathway and onto the southern plateau creating an ice dam. This dam backed up the waters of the Columbia into Glacial Lake Columbia and later during the Missoula Floods forced those waters into eastern Washington, creating the Scablands. The river at Grand Coulee found no existing valley and thus forged its own pathway across the divide, creating the Upper Coulee. The plateau is not level, but is marked with wrinkles and upfolds of the basalt. The diverted waters of the Columbia, encountered the monoclinal flexure, a steep warping up of toward the northwest. Lake Columbia topped the ridge
Moses Coulee thrasher, sage sparrow, poorwill, mountain bluebird, loggerhead shrike, canyon wren, white-throated swift, golden eagle), plants (sagebrush buttercup, shooting star, sulphur lupine, serviceberry, mock orange, slender cryptantha, Tiehm's rush, big sagebrush, bluebunch wheatgrass and sego lily) and animals (mule deer, least chipmunk, bats, and marmot). Moses Coulee Moses Coulee is a canyon in the Waterville plateau region of Douglas County, Washington. Moses Coulee is the second-largest and westernmost canyon of the Channeled Scablands, located about to the west of the larger Grand Coulee. This water channel is now dry, but during glacial periods, large outburst floods with discharges greater than carved