Western United States & Canada: Regional Map and Introduction
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The content of this section was reorganized in early 2003. This section now covers the major skiable volcanoes
of the western U.S. and Canada, except those in the Cascade Range. The Cascade volcanoes of California, Oregon,
Washington, and British Columbia are already covered in a separate guidebook on this website,
Skiing the Cascade Volcanoes, and the duplicate pages have
now been removed from this section. The descriptive paragraphs below will be revised to reflect the
updated content.
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  Select a mountain from the clickable map above |
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Southern British Columbia
# Info about volcanoes of southern British Columbia (except Cascade volcanoes) . . . Anahim Volcanic Belt: Rainbow Range Ilgachuz Range Itcha Range Coast Mountains and Pemberton Volcanic Belt: Silverthrone Mountain Mount Waddington Mount Munday |
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| Sierra Nevada
# The Sierra Nevada stretches along the eastern edge of California, crowned by many spectacular peaks including the highest in the contiguous US, Mt Whitney. The main range is non-volcanic, formed from an uplifted fault block, but several active volcanic centers can be found along the eastern edge, such as the Inyo and Mono Craters and the Long Valley Caldera (Mammoth Mtn). The Sierra is also usually blessed with plentiful snowfall, but is more prone to severe winter drought than the Cascades. The weather in spring and summer is usually much sunnier than in the Cascades to the north, thus producing the famous Sierra spring corn snow. |
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| Interior West
# The dominant feature of the interior West is the Rocky Mountains, which stretch in a series of ranges from south of the Mexican border to far north in Canada, and include the majority of the high peaks in the lower 48 United States. The Rockies are folded and uplifted mountains, without any significant volcanic peaks, and so are beyond the scope of these pages (and well represented in many published guidebooks). The interior West does, however, contain numerous scattered volcanic centers. Best known are the Yellowstone caldera in Wyoming and the Craters of the Moon in Idaho, but other recent volcanic features can be found in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The only major stratovolcanoes in this region are San Francisco Mtn (the highest point is called Humphreys Peak) and Mt Taylor, both of which are long extinct. Generally, the climate in the interior is much drier than along the Pacific coast, with greater extremes of heat in summer and cold in winter. Snowfall is far less than in the Cascades or Sierra, but usually is plentiful enough, and much more likely to be powder. |
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