The Columbia River Basalt Group formations are spread across northwestern US states.
The basalt flows have been gradually exposed in the Columbia Gorge over eons of time by ancient river floods and other weathering processes. The Gorge cliffs visible today are prominent steep eroded rock cliffs several hundreds of feet high (such as Crown Point), while some notably taller basalt rock formations exist, such as seen near St Peters Dome (ranging several thousands of feet tall).
Much of it is unclimbable, or its barely climbable (at least in the normal sense of the word, where today's rock climber generally desires some sense of 'security'). Where the steep cliffs are utilized for rock climbing purposes it's always prudent to wear a helmet, whether ice climbing or adventure climbing. In those rare key lucky spots the rock can be reasonably stable (again, in a relative sort of way).
Geology books have their own unique coded way of describing this crazy rock structure type.
Yet climbers usually need their own specialized kind of phrase-ology. A more descriptive phrase for adventure climbing spots like Crown Point would be....
"...Vertical cliffs composed of cube-ish rectangular blocky cobblestone hunk-ish chunks of detached, or hollow sounding rock, mostly variable fractured 4-8" sized cobble blocks, infrequently in rare locations as taller columnar jointed blocks, weathered exfoliating stone (split by numerous seams or cracks), vegetated (i.e. brush, grass, etc), mossy in spots, lichen in spots, some notably chossy aspects where the weathering process is vigorous, random stone rubble heaped ledges, with certain few rare parts of steep cliff surprisingly solidly connected (yep solid enough for bolts!), yet due to the nature of the pig its always adventure-ish entertainment helmet recommended terrain provided it fits your key rock climbing skill set caliber..."
Hmmm....guess its time to do a repeat fun run up West Chimney!
