TRIBUTE | lake-missoula

A Tribute to Dr. David Alt

my Mentor and Advisor

"Geologists call the layers of light and dark sediment laid down on the floors of glacial lakes varves. A lake’s varves are its archives, a record of its summers and winters. You see the records of warm or cool summers in pale layers that are thicker or thinner than most. Find a thin streak of pale rock flour in a dark winter layer, and you see the lake’s memory of a midwinter thaw. Very small amounts of rock flour color a lake a startling green-blue. Glacial Lake Missoula surely became a splendid and brilliant greenish blue as the last of the summer rock flour settled and the larch trees blazed yellow in the deepening chill of the coming winter,” wrote Dr. David Alt in his 2001 Mountain Press publication, Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods; author of more than thirty books.

Photo by Sandy, his wife

Dr. David Alt was a skillful writer and gifted orator, who had the unique ability to transform the complexities of geology, combined with a mixture of humor, into understandable concepts for students and lay-geologists alike; yet not bore his peers and professional colleagues. For nearly four decades, his charm, quick wit, and passion for science and teaching filled classrooms and lecture halls. Having sat through his course on geomorphology, his lectures reminded me of fire-side chats by a master storyteller.

I first met Dr. Alt in the spring of 1968 as a new UM geology undergraduate while taking the Field Methods course. Glacial Lake Missoula was the subject of one of the weekend field trips, with a planned stop at the giant current ripples of Camas Prairie. Only just arriving in Missoula, I was probably the only student in the course who’d never heard of Lake Missoula. I recall Dr. Alt directing our attention out the bus windows, pointing out the giant current ripples on both sides of the road as we drove north towards Markel Pass. I looked out both sides of the bus and not knowing what I was looking for I asked, where are they? With a sheepish grin, Dr. Alt looked at me and said something like, those hills are the ripple marks and were created by huge volumes of water spilling over those hills in front of us; I think my jaw must have dropped. By the end of the day, Alt’s Lake Missoula story was deeply entrenched into my subconscious and was to forever change my academic life; although I didn’t know it at the time.

Glacial Lake Missoula was a passion, but it wasn’t his only scientific interest. Dave and fellow UM professor Don Hyndman, wrote seven very popular guides as part of the Mountain Press Publishing Company “Roadside Geology” series. Through a recent conversation with Dr. Hyndman, I learned that he, Dave Alt and UM professor James Sears, theorized in 1990 that the famous geysers and hot springs of Yellowstone Park were created by the impact of a 15-mile diameter meteor that struck the Oregon-Nevada border 17 million years ago, opening a crack in the earth’s mantle.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1933, David eventually graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1955, he earned his MSc. degree in 1958 from the University of Minnesota, and a PhD from the University of Texas, Austin in 1961. Before arriving at the University of Montana in 1965, Dr. Alt held teaching and lecturing positions in Leeds, England and the University of Florida in Gainesville. After a 36-year teaching career at the University of Montana, Dave retired as Professor Emeritus in 2001. He remained active with his writing and Lake Missoula still held his interest as I learned in a phone conversation with him in the fall of 2014.

Dr. Alt was an inspiration to his many students, peers, colleagues and friends. Devoted to his wife Sandy, two children, Konrad and Lisa, and 12 grandchildren, Dave passed away April 26, 2015.

Professor Alt was my undergraduate Senior Research Paper and Master's Thesis advisor from 1969-1971. He has been an inspiration to me throughout my professional life.