Stained Glass Mount Rainier National Park Washington

Mount Rainier is a about 500,000 to 1 million years old stratovolcano. Due to its enormous growth to a height of about 4800 meters glaciated its peak. During the last 65,000 years of Mount Rainier has undergone at least three extended periods of glaciation. The last extensive glaciation was about 25,000 to 10,000 years ago. During this time, the Mount Rainier was completely covered by ice. Some of these glaciers stretched up to a distance of 60 kilometers from the mountain.

The glacial cirques and ridges ruined the smooth, symmetrical shape of the volcano. Rock slides, avalanches and lahars meant that Mount Rainier lost about one-third of its volume. The collapse of the mountain summit about 5800 years ago triggered a devastating lahars of history. More than 300 square kilometers of the White River Valley and the adjacent lowlands were devastated. Today the Mount Rainier Glacier form covering an area of ​​over 90 square kilometers, the largest contiguous area of a single mountain in the USA outside of Alaska.

The annual rainfall of up to 28 meters of snow feed the glacier so that they are now considered stable. The glaciation causes the mountaintop by avalanches and rock slides further changed. Of the total of 26 glaciers of Emmons Glacier is the largest, the second largest is the Carbon Glacier, which flows more than 6.5 kilometers to the northwest. Other glaciers are among others the Nisqually Glacier, the North Mowich Glacier, the Tahoma Glacier, the Winthrop Glacier and the Glacier Gowitz. In Paradise Glacier Paradise, the Ice Caves, which were surveyed in 1978 as the world's largest glacial cave system with a total length of about 13 kilometers are.