Can You Name the Third Highest Cascade Volcano?

Can you name the second highest? How about the highest?

It's probably not a fair question for most of you. I've always had a mind for the elevations of mountains, having memorized them effortlessly throughout my life, ever since I learned of the existence of topographic maps. I've even been irritated at the advent of the GPS system because they recalibrated the official heights of many of the iconic mountains of my youth. It's confusing.

But anyway, about those Cascades...

The Cascade Range extends from the Lassen Volcanic Complex in Northern California to Mt. Garibaldi in the southern part of British Columbia. The chain of active volcanoes is the result of the subduction of the Pacific Ocean crust beneath the North American continent. Portions of the oceanic crust melt and rise towards the surface. Once in awhile one or the other volcanoes erupts as did Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and 2004, and Lassen Peak in 1914-17. Others are less active, but they are close enough to population centers to constitute a serious hazard.

The highest volcano in the chain is Mt. Rainier in Washington at 14,411 feet (4,392 meters). It was actually much higher, perhaps 16,000 feet, but debris avalanches and glacial erosion have torn away the older summit. The mountain has more glacial ice than any other mountain in the lower 48 states, and an eruption combined with melting ice would present a huge threat to the urban areas in the southern Puget Sound.

Mt. Shasta (14,162 feet; 4,317 meters) is the second highest Cascades volcano, and the most voluminous stratovolcano in the chain (two basaltic shields, Medicine Lake Highlands and Newberry Crater have an even greater volume). It has erupted roughly every 600 years with the last eruption about 200 years ago.

Now this is where things get sticky. The third highest peak in the Cascade Range is normally taken as Mt. Adams in Washington at 12,280 feet (3,740 meters). But it all depends on how you define "mountain" or "volcano". Geographers often consider a hill to be a mountain if it has a prominence of 400 feet or so. By that measure, a subsidiary peak on the summit of Rainier, Liberty Cap (14,112 feet; 4301 meters) is the third highest peak in the Cascades, but it isn't a separate volcano. That honor goes to the volcano in all of these pictures that I took over the last two days while traveling home through Northern California. It's the peak that never gets enough respect. Even the name is diminutive: Shastina.

Shastina rises to a height of 12,355 feet (3,760 meters), and has a prominence of 450 feet from the main cone of Shasta. It formed in a series of eruptions about 9,800 years ago.

Clouds covered the main summit of Shasta this weekend, so Shastina stood out as a separate and unique peak as we drove south. On other trips, it doesn't dominate the skyline in quite the same way, but it is still a huge mountain. It's the flattened peak on the right side of Shasta in the picture below. In you mind's eye, you could erase the main summit and still see an awesome volcano.

That Such Places Exist Unsullied...I am Grateful

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”

                                                                                                        Richard Dawkins

Geotripper is back! We are home from a glorious journey through British Columbia, Alberta, Montana and Washington. It was a stunning landscape with a fascinating geological story. A detailed series of posts of course will follow, but for today, I am sharing examples of some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world.

Indian Paintbrush in Yoho National Park

Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park

Takkakaw Falls, Yoho National Park

Mt. Rundle, Banff National Park

Bow Lake and Glacier, Banff National Park

Athabasca Glacier, Jasper National Park

Peyto Lake, Banff National Park

Drumheller Badlands in Dinosaur Country

Marmot at Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump Park in Alberta

Clements Mountain near Logan Pass in Glacier National Park

Bighorn Sheep at Logan Pass

Rocky Mountain Goats near Logan Pass

Mt. Adams from Sunrise Point, Mt. Rainier National Park

“Travel is like love, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.” Pico Iyer

Picture of the Day: The Airliner Chronicles, Part 3

From the air, the scale of the eruption of Mount St. Helens is clear. Even after 25 years, much of the landscape north of the volcano is barren. Spirit Lake can be discerned to the left of the beheaded volcano in the center of the photo. Coldwater Lake (to the left, and forward of Spirit Lake) formed from the damming effect of the debris avalanche and ash flow down the Toutle River valley. You wouldn't know it from the near total lack of interest in the media, but St. Helens has been in continual eruption since 2004, and a new dome has grown, which towers above the older 1986 dome. Remote Mt. Adams rises in the far distance.

This photo was snapped during a flight to Seattle from San Francisco on an extraordinarily clear November day, and our route took us past all of the major Cascades volcanoes. My attempt to get pictures of all the major peaks was nearly successful, except that we apparently flew directly over Crater Lake, and I was briefly disoriented at first and missed Shasta and Lassen at the south end of the range.