On our flight from Ketchikan to Seattle last week, we crossed over an area of British Columbia with spectacular ranges, massive ice sheets, glaciers and tortuous fjords. This was the Pacific Ranges Province of the Coastal Mountains of North America, the southernmost in British Columbia.
Harboring Mt. Waddington (13,186 feet), the highest summit in British Columbia, and four Temperate Zone Ice Sheets (the largest on the planet), it is a beautiful landscape created by tectonic collision, subduction volcanism, glacial erosion, copious precipitation and the interaction of land and sea. A maze of rivers and inlets dissect the terrain, best appreciated from an aircraft.
Sparsely populated, the Pacific Ranges Province, extending northwestward from Vancouver, is actually comprised of thirteen primary mountain ranges and almost as many subranges. It is bounded on the east by the Interior Plateau of British Columbia and, on the west, by the numerous islands and channels of the Inside Passage.
Harboring Mt. Waddington (13,186 feet), the highest summit in British Columbia, and four Temperate Zone Ice Sheets (the largest on the planet), it is a beautiful landscape created by tectonic collision, subduction volcanism, glacial erosion, copious precipitation and the interaction of land and sea. A maze of rivers and inlets dissect the terrain, best appreciated from an aircraft.
Sparsely populated, the Pacific Ranges Province, extending northwestward from Vancouver, is actually comprised of thirteen primary mountain ranges and almost as many subranges. It is bounded on the east by the Interior Plateau of British Columbia and, on the west, by the numerous islands and channels of the Inside Passage.
