Information about Mount Baker
(sources listed below)
Mount Baker
Mount Baker is an ice-clad volcano in the North Cascades of Washington State about 50 kilometers (31 miles) due east of the city of Bellingham and 25 kilometers south of the International Boundary. Mount Baker is a large stratovolcano. The glacier-covered cone of andesite lava flows and breccias rises 2 kilometers above adjacent mountains carved from a complex of older sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.
Mt. Baker-Early History
Research in the last decade shows Mount Baker to be the youngest of several volcanic centers in the area and one of the youngest volcanoes in the Cascade Range. Activity in the Mount Baker area began more than one million years ago and many of the lava and tephra deposits have been removed by glacial erosion.
Subsequently, eruptions in the Mount Baker area have produced cones and lava flows of andesite, the rock that makes up much of the other Cascade Range volcanoes like Mt. Rainier, Adams, and Hood. From about 900,000 years ago to the present, numerous andesitic volcanic centers in the area have come and gone, eroded by glaciers. The largest is Black Buttes edifice, active between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago and formerly bigger than today’s Mt. Baker.
Today’s Mt. Baker
Modern Mount Baker formed during and since the last ice age, which ended about 15,000 years ago. Lava flows from the summit vent erupted between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago and, during the final stages of edifice construction, blocky pyroclastic flows poured down most of the volcano’s drainage’s. An eruption 6,600 years ago produced a blanket of ash that extended more than 20 miles to the northeast. This eruption probably occurred from the presently ice-filled summit crater. Subsequently, sulphurous gases have found two pathways to the surface Dorr Fumaroles, northeast of the summit, and Sherman Crater, south of the summit.
Mount Baker Hydrology
Mount Baker is drained on the north by streams into the North Fork Nooksack River, and on the southeast by tributaries of the Baker River, which empties into the Skagit River about 14 kilometers southeast of Mount Baker. The Baker River is impounded by two dams; the upper dam is near the mouth of Sulfur Creek valley and forms Baker Lake, and the lower dam is about 12 kilometers farther down valley and forms Lake Shannon.
Mount Baker Glaciers
After Mount Rainier, it is the most heavily glaciated of the Cascade volcanoes: the volume of snow and ice on Mount Baker is greater than that of all the other Cascade volcanoes combined. Much of Mount Baker’s earlier geological record was eroded away during the ice age, by thick ice sheets that filled the valleys and covered much of the region. In the last 14,000 years, the area around the mountain has been largely ice-free.
Remarks: Increased heat output and minor melting of summit glacier in 1975; some debris flows not related to eruption. Mt. Baker has a history of extensive pyroclastic flows, acidic melt water and effusive emissions of steam containing occasional traces of ash and sulfur dust. Activity had diminished somewhat by 1878.
References: Information was collected from the following sites.
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/home.html
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Baker/framework.html
For more information please look at these sites.
Nearby Attraction - North Cascades National Park
NOTE: Information in Purple is from one of the sources above. Information in Black or Green is original work.