The Saint Elias Mountains (french: Chaîne Saint-Élie) are a subgroup of the

Pacific Coast Ranges The Pacific Coast Ranges (officially gazetted as the Pacific Mountain System in the United States) are the series of mountain ranges that stretch along the West Coast of North America from Alaska south to Northern and Central Mexico. Although the ...

, located in southeastern

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U. ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

, Southwestern

Yukon Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...

and the very far northwestern part of

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world ...

. The range spans Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in the United States and

Kluane National Park and Reserve Kluane National Park and Reserve (; french: Parc national et réserve de parc national de Kluane) are two protected areas in the southwest corner of the territory of Yukon. The National Park Reserve was set aside in 1972 to become a national pa ...

in Canada and includes all of

Glacier Bay National Park Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is an American national park located in Southeast Alaska west of Juneau. President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the area around Glacier Bay a national monument under the Antiquities Act on February 26, 1925. ...

. In Alaska, the range includes parts of the city/borough of Yakutat and the Hoonah-Angoon and Valdez-Cordova census areas. This mountain range is named after

Mount Saint Elias Mount Saint Elias (also designated Boundary Peak 186), the second-highest mountain in both Canada and the United States, stands on the Yukon and Alaska border about southwest of Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada. The Canadian side of ...

, which in turn was named in 1741 by the Danish explorer

Vitus Bering Vitus Jonassen Bering (baptised 5 August 1681 – 19 December 1741),All dates are here given in the Julian calendar, which was in use throughout Russia at the time. also known as Ivan Ivanovich Bering, was a Danish cartographer and explorer in ...

Geology

The St. Elias Mountains form the highest coastal mountain range on Earth. It formed due to the

subduction Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, ...

of the Yakutat microplate underneath the

North American Plate The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific ...

. The Yakutat microplate is a wedge shaped oceanic plateau with a thickness of . Similar to the adjacent

Pacific plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and Iza ...

, which has a crustal thickness of , the Yakutat plate is moving northwestward at a rate of per year with respect to North America. The Yakutat plate is transported northwards along the active

Fairweather Fault The Queen Charlotte Fault is an active transform fault that marks the boundary of the North American plate and the Pacific plate. It is Canada's right-lateral strike-slip equivalent to the San Andreas Fault to the south in California. The Queen Ch ...

, which probably started more than 35 million years ago. Due to its thickness, the Yakutat plate is buoyant, resulting in surface uplift of the overriding North American plate, which formed the

Talkeetna Mountains The Talkeetna Mountains (''Dghelaay tahwt’aene'' in Ahtna) () are a mountain range in Alaska. The Matanuska and Susitna River valleys, with towns such as Trapper Creek, Talkeetna, Wasilla, Palmer, Sutton, and Chickaloon, roughly bound the ...

and the

Alaska Range The Alaska Range is a relatively narrow, 600-mile-long (950 km) mountain range in the southcentral region of the U.S. state of Alaska, from Lake Clark at its southwest endSources differ as to the exact delineation of the Alaska Range. ThBoa ...

Southcentral Alaska Southcentral Alaska (russian: Юго-Центральная Аляска) is the portion of the U.S. state of Alaska consisting of the shorelines and uplands of the central Gulf of Alaska. Most of the population of the state lives in this regio ...

, located above the subducted part of the Yakutat plate. Yakutat Icefield

The St. Elias Mountains formed at the plate boundary between the Yakutat and North American plates. The up-to--thick sediments that have been deposited on top of the Yakutat plate became imbricated and deformed as they were scraped off and compose today the southern (coastal) flanks of the St. Elias Mountains. In contrast the high elevated regions of the drainage divide ( Bagley Icefield, Seward Glacier) and north of it are composed of rocks that are part of the North American plate. The highest peaks of the St. Elias Mountains are located in the high ice field region of the Kluane National Park (

Mount Logan Mount Logan () is the highest mountain in Canada and the second-highest peak in North America after Denali. The mountain was named after Sir William Edmond Logan, a Canadian geologist and founder of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). Moun ...

, Mount Vancouver) and north of the Malaspina Glacier (

, Mount Cook), in the region known as the St. Elias syntaxis. At the

syntaxis Syntaxis is a style in writing or in rhetoric that favors complex syntax, in contrast to the simple sentence structures of parataxis. For example, 19th-century German academic prose, and John Milton's ''Paradise Lost'' poetry in English are no ...

region the tectonic style changes from

strike-slip In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tecton ...

motion along the

to collision west of Malaspina Strait. This tectonic transition concentrates stress in the crust at the syntaxis that together with efficient glacial erosion results in positive feedback processes that through time forms extreme high mountain peaks and local relief, and rapid exhumation of rocks from up to 10 km depths to the surface.

Ranges

The mountains are divided by the Duke Depression, with the shorter, more rounded Kluane Ranges to the east, and the higher Icefield Ranges to the west. Sub-ranges of the Saint Elias include the

Alsek Ranges The Alsek Ranges are the southeasternmost subdivision of the Saint Elias Mountains of the Pacific Cordillera. They span the region between the Alsek River, Glacier Bay and the Kelsall River (which is the route of the highway from Haines, Alask ...

, the

Fairweather Range The Fairweather Range is the unofficial name for a mountain range located in the U.S. state of Alaska and the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is the southernmost range of the Saint Elias Mountains. The northernmost section of the range i ...

, and the Centennial Range.

Highest mountains

The highest mountains of the range include:

Image

Notes

References

* * * {{Authority control Landforms of Chugach Census Area, Alaska Landforms of Copper River Census Area, Alaska Mountains of Unorganized Borough, Alaska Mountains of Yakutat City and Borough, Alaska Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve