EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Cascades Flight

Cascade Mountains
Washington and Oregon, USA

Explanation:  Enjoy this flight over the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, USA.  

Every peak you see here is a volcano -- dormant or active.  See if you can identify Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Hood, Mount Jefferson, Three Sisters, and more.  Not displayed here is the immense caldera of Crater Lake, featured in a previous episode of Ecology Picture of the Week.  

The Cascade Range was formed mostly as the Juan de Fuca Tectonic Plate of the eastern Pacific Ocean pushed its way under the North American continent in a so-called zone of subduction and up rose the volcanoes of the Cascades over the past 36 million years.  

Science aside, sometimes we just need to sit back and succumb to the spell of the beauty of the land.