Geology of Oregon - The North Cascades

The North Cascades

The North Cascade Range in Washington is part of the American cordillera, a mountain chain stretching more than 19,000 km (12,000 mi) from Tierra del Fuego to the Alaska Peninsula, and second only to the Alpine-Himalayan chain in height. Although only a small part of the Cordillera, mile for mile, the North Cascade Range is steeper and wetter than most other ranges in the conterminous United States.

In geology, the range has more in common with the Coast Ranges of British Columbia and Alaska than it does with its Cordilleran cousins in the Rocky Mountains or Sierra Nevada. Although the peaks of the North Cascades do not reach great elevations (high peaks are generally in the 2,100 to 2,400 m (7,000 to 8,000 ft) range, their overall relief, the relatively uninterrupted vertical distance from valley bottom to mountain top, is commonly 1,200 to 1,800 m (4,000 to 6,000 ft).

Rocks of the North Cascades record at least 400 million years of history: time enough to have collected a jumble of different rocks. The range is a geologic mosaic made up of volcanic island arcs, deep ocean sediments, basaltic ocean floor, parts of old continents, submarine fans, and even pieces of the deep subcrustal mantle of the earth. The disparate pieces of the North Cascade mosaic were born far from one another but subsequently drifted together, carried along by the tectonic plates that make up the Earth's outer shell. Over time, the moving plates eventually accreted the various pieces of the mosaic onto the western side of North America.

As if this mosaic of unrelated pieces were not complex enough, some of the assembled pieces were uplifted, eroded by streams, and then locally buried in their own eroded debris; other pieces were forced deep into the Earth to be heated and squeezed, almost beyond recognition, and then raised again to view.

About 35 million years ago, a volcanic arc grew across this complex mosaic of old terranes. Volcanoes erupted to cover the older rocks with lava and ash. Large masses of molten rock invaded the older rocks from below. The volcanic arc is still active today, decorating the skyline with the cones of Mount Baker and Glacier Peak.

The deep canyons and sharp peaks of today's North Cascades scene are products of profound erosion. Running water has etched out the grain of the range, landslides have softened the abrupt edges, homegrown glaciers have scoured the peaks and high valleys and, during the Ice Age, the Cordilleran Ice Sheet overrode almost all the range and rearranged courses of streams. Erosion has written and still writes it own history in the mountains, but it has also revealed the complex mosaic of the bedrock.