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Scenic Photography of the North Cascades

Scenic Photography of the North Cascades

Mountains

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The North Cascades begin at Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State and end at the Fraser River in British Columbia. These mountains are a complex mixture of rock derived from dead volcanoes, live volcanoes and sediments deposited in streams and seas that dried up millions of years ago. The older rock was formed before and during the time of the dinosaurs and has been upthrust, buried, baked to the melting point and beyond, bent back on itself, reworked, recycled and then upthrust again to be carved away by glacier ice. During the most recent geological history of the North Cascades, glaciers have been the dominant erosional force and they have created much of the landscape that is so familiar to us. Erosion in these mountains has left a vertical relief ranging between 4000 feet (1220 m) and 6000 feet (1830 m). Most of the glaciers that carved the ruggedness into the Cascades were part of an immense continental ice sheet that retreated about 12,000 years ago, but numerous small alpine glaciers remain, and the North Cascades have the most glaciers of any area in the lower 48 states.

Some of the text used from the following

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountians

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