I wrote a poem about Mount Rainier, though I had never visited:
Mount Rainier
Magnificent Mount Rainier,
Olympic kissed in Washington,
Under the wide heavens’
Night skies;
Towers in the darkness.
Rains fall on Rainier’s
Ascending crags.
Ice and snow soon follows.
Now my hiking boots,
Ice pick, backpack and dreams,
Everything I am are lost
Rainier wins in this nightmare.
I got this review:
"Not to diminish its beauty, but isn’t Mt Rainier an active volcano? I’m sure the views and snows from atop it are magnificent. But you’re probably (unfortunately) right that Mt Rainier will win…"
So I googled the mountain:
Mount Rainier is an episodically active composite volcano, also called a stratovolcano. Volcanic activity began between one half and one million years ago, with the most recent eruption cycle ending about 1,000 years ago. Over the past half million years, Mount Rainier has erupted again and again, alternating between quiet lava-producing eruptions and explosive debris-producing eruptions. The eruptions built up layer after layer of lava and loose rubble, eventually forming the tall cone that characterizes composite volcanoes. At one time, lava flows on opposite sides of the mountain probably projected more than 1,000 feet (305 meters) above the present summit at Columbia Crest which rises 14,410 feet (4392 meters) above sea level on the rim of the recent lava cone. The upper portion of the volcano's cone was likely removed by explosions and landslides. Mount Rainier's extensive glacier system then carved the volcano's cone into its current craggy form.
Mount Rainier also sits on a subduction zone where colliding continental and oceanic plates cause regular seismic and geothermal activity. A subduction zone is an area where one continental plate is being forced underneath another into the earth's mantel. Mount Rainier experiences about 20 small earthquakes a year, making it the second most seismically active volcano in the northern Cascade Range after Mount St. Helens.
And now I know!
-Lou
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