![]() ![]() You look at the mountains, dotted with white. Glacial crevasses show the blue hue of the ice Even from the vantage point of a moraine, you can experience this change by listening to the creaks and groans, almost as if the glacier were telling its own story. The number and size change each year as climate change continues to impact them. As of 2020, Washington is the state with the second largest number of glaciers in the US, after Alaska. Glaciers have had an impact for millions of years, although what that looks like is changing. While today we may stand on soil, only 14,000 years ago, if visitors could have come to the region, they would have been standing atop ice thousands of feet high before it started to recede and release the land below from its icy weight.Ībout 2.1 % of the Earth’s water is held in glaciers around the world. However, it has also been shaped from above. Over the past tens of millions of years, the earth has been rising from below. Geology is not just about sediment, but about the shaping and forming of it, as well. As this happens, the stone is tilted almost vertical, now thousands of feet above the sea as we know it today.Ī view from the terminus of the Hoh Glacier These segments are former pieces of the ocean floor, now standing just shy of 6,000 feet above sea-level! The former ocean bed crumples and folds as it crashes into the North American Plate, rising from below. If one could peel apart these “pages” they would see a very different story of what the mountain has looked like before. As hikers follow the ridge on the Hurricane Hill trail, they pass by what appears to be slices of stone all pressed together into a tall standing ream of rock. However, while the panoramic distant peaks may draw the eye and drop the jaw, taking a moment while standing on the “hill” to ponder the ridges and folds right below the feet allows for a close-up peep into the lost chapters of the peninsula. Angeles are popular daytime destinations to get far ranging views of the widespread mountains of Olympic. This ridgetop and corresponding trails up Hurricane Hill and Mt. Millions of visitors each year traverse the high and winding road up to Hurricane Ridge. Standing vertically, the many layers of former sea rock show the rise in the Olympic Range The Juan de Fuca plate is currently being forced under the larger North American plate, causing uprising of the landscape, crumpling of rocks, and endless jagged peaks that inspire visitors to the peninsula every day. About 34 million years ago, just off of what was the former coastline, two massive tectonic plates, the North American Plate and the Juan de Fuca Plate, were sent into a collision that would literally shape the Olympic mountains. Plates can move away from each other, parallel to each other, or into to each other. As the floor of the ocean shifted with the larger tectonic plate it rested upon, the basalt would become key to this hidden geologic past. This layer of sediment built up atop the tectonic plate below, blanketing the ocean depths. Years ago, underwater volcanoes erupted, gushing lava that cooled into basalt, a distinctly volcanic rock, on the ocean floor. The Olympic range is not volcanic, but visitors may notice some geology that makes it seem as if they were. Washington state boasts volcanoes from the north to the south that have made history. Off the coast of the Olympic Peninsula, a dramatic story of epic proportions is slowly, yet steadily, occurring beneath the sea. The basalts and sedimentary rocks that form the mass of these peaks were laid down 18 to 57 million years ago offshore, then uplifted, bent, folded and eroded into the rugged peaks you see today. The Olympic Mountains were born in the sea. Winter recreating in Olympic National Park
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