Mount Baker
This article is about Mount Baker in North America. For other meanings, see Mount Baker (disambiguation).
Mount Baker is a 3286 m high stratovolcano with an ice-capped summit in the Cascade Range in Washington (Whatcom County). It is located about 50 km east of the town of Bellingham and is only 64 km from the Canadian metropolis of Vancouver. The volcano was called "Koma Kulshan" (white steep mountain) by the Nooksack tribes. It received its official name from Lieutenant Joseph Baker, who was the first European to sight the mountain on April 30, 1792 aboard HMS Discovery under the command of George Vancouver.
After Mount Rainier, Mount Baker is the most glacier-covered volcano in the Cascade Mountains: the volume of snow and ice is 1.8 km³, larger than that of all the volcanoes in the range combined (except Mount Rainier). It is also one of the world's mountains with the most snowfall: in 1999 it set the (unofficial) world record for the most snowfall in a season (2855 cm).
The mountain is about 30,000 years old, but rests on the flank of the extinct and eroded Black Buttes volcano, which was active about 500,000 to 300,000 years ago. Mount Baker's last eruptions occurred in the mid-19th century. Numerous small-volume bedloads occurred in the late 1950s. In the early 1970s, a plume of steam or smoke appeared and the dam located below the summit was emptied as a precautionary measure to prevent possible flooding of the town of Everett.
The mountain and its surroundings are popular with climbers, mountaineers, hikers, snowmobilers, skiers, campers and many more. The normal route for climbing the mountain is via the Easton Glacier. It usually takes two days to complete.
The ski area is located below Artist Point, where several feet of snow fall each year due to its proximity to the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest coast.
See also
- Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest
- Mount Baker National Recreation Area
