Start of the Trip

Here I am in Seattle, in my house, taking a long look at the Cascade Mountain Range and Mount Rainier.  Today is the first day in my trip around the world, looking for volcanoes and mountains and the like.  I was about ready to go when I realized there was a volcanic mountain range in sight!  The Cascade mountains are right near a boundary of two tectonic plates in North America, the North America plate and the Juan de Fuca plate.  Mount Rainier, the highest point in the Range, is at 46^o51’1.9”N 121^o45’35.6”W. It formed millions of years ago when the boundary, a convergent boundary of a land plate and an ocean plate, created subduction.  Subduction is a process when two plates collide and one goes over the other due to density.  In this case, the Juan de Fuca plate went under the North America plate and some of the Juan de Fuca plate went deeper.  In the Earth, deeper is hotter, and this plate heated up, creating magma.  This rose to the surface in the form of a volcano which is now Mount Rainier. Similar things happened to create the rest of the volcanoes in the Cascade Range. On the border, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, are volcanoes, like Mt. Rainier and Mount St. Helens, and is able to produce earthquakes, magnitude 9.0.  However, the last great earthquake was in 1700.  Recent volcanic activity along this border and the Cascade Range was the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in 1980, but minor eruptions have gone off since then, the most recent in 2006. Well, now I'm off to the airport, a little late.  Next stop: Kathmandu!

Mt. Rainier
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/bigs/line0915.jpg