Everything about The Olympic Mountains totally explained
The
Olympic Mountains are a
mountain range on the
Olympic Peninsula of western
Washington in the
United States. The
mountains are not especially high -
Mount Olympus is the highest at - but the western slopes of the Olympics face the
Pacific Ocean and are thus the wettest place in the 48 contiguous states; the Hoh Ranger Station in the
Hoh Rain Forest records an average of 360 cm (142 in) of
rainfall each year. Most of the mountains are protected within the bounds of the
Olympic National Park. Physiographically, they're a section of the larger Pacific Border province, which in turn are part of the larger
Pacific Mountain System physiographic division.
The mountains were originally called "Sun-a-do" by the
Duwamish Indians, while the first European to see them, the
Spanish navigator
Juan Perez, named them "Sierra Nevada de Santa Rosalia", in
1774. But the English captain
John Meares, seeing them in
1788, thought them beautiful enough for the gods to dwell there, and named them "Mount Olympus" after the one in
Greece. Alternate proposals never caught on, and in
1864 the
Seattle Weekly Gazette persuaded the government to make the present-day name official. Though readily visible from most parts of western Washington, the interior was almost entirely unexplored until the
1890s. Mount Olympus itself wasn't ascended until
1907, one of the first successes of
The Mountaineers, which had been organized in Seattle just a few years earlier. A number of the more obscure and least-accessible peaks in the range weren't ascended until the 1970s.
The Olympics have the form of a cluster of steep-sided peaks surrounded by heavily-forested foothills and incised by deep valleys.
The climax
forests consist of
Sitka spruce and
western hemlock.
Douglas fir occurs in groves. Other types of
firs may be seen also. Clearings in the forest quickly become covered with
vine maple,
slide alder, and
devil's club, making cross-country travel most challenging.
Another consequence of the high precipitation is the large number of snowfields and
glaciers, reaching down to 1,500 m (5,000 ft) above sea level.
The
Mount Olympus National Monument was proclaimed by
Theodore Roosevelt in
1909, and made into a park in
1938.
Principal summits:
Other Summits
Boulder Mountain - Peak located in the Lake Crescent and Elwha River area
Mount Storm King - located just to the south of Lake Crescent
Geology
The Olympic Mountains are made up of an obducted clastic wedge material and oceanic crust. They are primarly Eocene sandstones, turbidites, and basaltic oceanic crust(1).
Further Information
Get more info on 'Olympic Mountains'.
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