In the mountaineering parlance of the Western United States, a fourteener is a mountain peak with an elevation of at least 14,000 ft (4267 m). The 96 fourteeners in the United States are all west of the Mississippi River. Colorado has the most (53) of any single state; Alaska is second with 29. Many peak baggers try to climb all fourteeners in the contiguous United States, one particular state, or another region.
The Saint Elias Mountains are a subgroup of the Pacific Coast Ranges, located in southeastern Alaska in the United States, Southwestern Yukon and the very far northwestern part of British Columbia in Canada. The range spans Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in the United States and Kluane National Park and Reserve in Canada and includes all of Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska. In Alaska, the range includes parts of the city/borough of Yakutat and the Hoonah-Angoon and Valdez-Cordova census areas.
Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve is an American national park and preserve managed by the National Park Service in south central Alaska. The park and preserve were established in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The protected areas are included in an International Biosphere Reserve and are part of the Kluane/Wrangell–St. Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek UNESCO World Heritage Site. The park and preserve form the largest area managed by the National Park Service with a total of 13,175,799.07 acres, an expanse larger than nine U.S. states. 8,323,147.59 acres are designated as the national park and the remaining 4,852,652.14 acres are designated as the preserve. The area designated as the national park alone is larger than the 47 smallest American national parks combined, and its area makes up over 15% of all national park land in the United States.
The Wrangell Volcanic Field is a volcanic field stretching from eastern Alaska in the United States to the southwestern Yukon Territory in Canada. The field includes the four highest volcanoes in the United States, Mount Bona, Mount Blackburn, Mount Sanford, and Mount Churchill, all of which exceed 15,000 ft in elevation. It formed as a result of subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the North American Plate at the easternmost end of the Aleutian Trench.
Mount Blackburn is the highest peak in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska in the United States. It is the fifth-highest peak in the United States and the twelfth-highest peak in North America. The mountain is an old, eroded shield volcano, the second-highest volcano in the U.S. behind Mount Bona and the fifth-highest in North America. It was named in 1885 by Lt. Henry T. Allen of the U.S. Army after Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn, a U.S. senator from Kentucky. It is located in the heart of Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, the largest national park in the country.
Mount Sanford is a shield volcano in the Wrangell Volcanic Field, in eastern Alaska near the Copper River. It is the sixth highest mountain in the United States and the third highest volcano behind Mount Bona and Mount Blackburn. The south face of the volcano, at the head of the Sanford Glacier, rises 8,000 feet (2,400 m) in 1 mile (1,600 m) resulting in one of the steepest gradients in North America.
Nabesna Glacier is a glacier in the U.S. state of Alaska. Fed by deep snowfall in the Wrangell Mountains, the 53 mile (85 km) long Nabesna is the longest valley glacier in North America and the world's longest interior valley glacier.
Mount Wrangell, in Ahtna K’ełt’aeni or K’ełedi when erupting, is a massive shield volcano located in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in southeastern Alaska, United States. The shield rises over 12,000 feet (3,700 m) above the Copper River to its southwest. Its volume is over 220 cubic miles (920 km3), making it more than twice as massive as Mount Shasta in California, the largest stratovolcano by volume in the Cascades. It is part of the Wrangell Volcanic Field, which extends for more than 250 kilometers (160 mi) across Southcentral Alaska into the Yukon Territory in Canada, and has an eruptive history spanning the time from Pleistocene to Holocene.
Mount Bona is one of the major mountains of the Saint Elias Mountains in eastern Alaska, and is the fifth-highest independent peak in the United States. It is either the tenth- or eleventh-highest peak in North America. Mount Bona and its adjacent neighbor Mount Churchill are both large ice-covered stratovolcanoes. Bona has the distinction of being the highest volcano in the United States and the fourth-highest in North America, outranked only by the three highest Mexican volcanoes, Pico de Orizaba, Popocatépetl, and Iztaccíhuatl. Its summit is a small stratovolcano on top of a high platform of sedimentary rocks.
Mount Churchill is a volcano in the Saint Elias Mountains and the Wrangell Volcanic Field of eastern Alaska. Churchill and its higher neighbor Mount Bona about 2 mi (3 km) to the southwest are both large ice-covered stratovolcanoes, with Churchill being the fourth highest volcano in the United States and the seventh highest in North America.
Mount Cook is a high peak on the Yukon Territory-Alaska border, in the Saint Elias Mountains of North America. It is approximately 15 miles southwest of Mount Vancouver and 35 miles east-southeast of Mount Saint Elias. It forms one of the corners of the jagged border, which is defined to run in straight lines between the major peaks. The same border also separates Kluane National Park in the Yukon Territory from Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska.
Mount Drum is a stratovolcano in the Wrangell Mountains of east-central Alaska in the United States. It is located at the extreme western end of the Wrangells, 18 miles (29 km) west-southwest of Mount Sanford and the same distance west-northwest of Mount Wrangell. It lies just inside the western boundary of Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park and Preserve and is 25 miles (40 km) east of the Copper River.
Atna Peaks is an eroded stratovolcano or shield volcano in the Wrangell Mountains of eastern Alaska. It is located in Wrangell–Saint Elias National Park about 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Mount Blackburn, the second-highest volcano in the United States, and just south of the massive Nabesna Glacier. Because the mountain is almost entirely covered in glaciers, no geological studies have been done, but published references state and the geological map shows that the mountain is an old eroded volcanic edifice.
Regal Mountain is an eroded stratovolcano or shield volcano in the Wrangell Mountains of eastern Alaska. It is located in Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park about 19 mi (31 km) east of Mount Blackburn, the second highest volcano in the United States, and southeast of the massive Nabesna Glacier. Regal Mountain is the third highest thirteener in Alaska, ranking just behind its neighbor, Atna Peaks. Because the mountain is almost entirely covered in glaciers, no geological studies have been done, but published references state and the geological map shows that the mountain is an old eroded volcanic edifice.
Mount Jarvis is an eroded shield volcano in the Wrangell Mountains of eastern Alaska. It is located in Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park about 10 miles (16 km) east of the summit of Mount Wrangell. The mountain sits at the northeastern edge of the massive ice-covered shield of Wrangell, rising nearly 5,000 feet (1,500 m) above it in a spectacular series of cliffs and icefalls.
