Granite Peak – August 14, 2019

It’s Science Wednesday! Ricardo and I are on Granite Peak in Montana this week for the Summits, Songs and Science Project. By the time this post goes up, ideally we’ll be making our way to the summit!

Granite Peak is Montana’s highest at 12,799 ft. and is situated in the Beartooth Mountains. Geologically, the large central core of the Beartooths is composed chiefly of complex metamorphic rocks of Precambrian age which have in part been dated radiometrically as more than 2 billion years old!

The landforms currently observed in the Beartooths are largely due to alpine glaciers, which first formed about 1.6 million years ago.

Today, the Beartooth mountains continue to erode and deposit material in their adjacent basins. However, the mountains still maintain such a high elevation due to the recent presence of the Yellowstone hotspot to the south. This increase in heat and pressure under the crust causes the mountains to still maintain their elevation while actively being eroded.

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