From the limited perspective of human life spans, Mount Adams has always been the dominant feature in Yakima County’s view of the Cascade Ridge.
Sure, you can see the tip of Mount Rainier peeking out when the weather’s right, but Mount Adams, the third-tallest peak in the entire Cascade Range and the second-tallest in Washington, wasn’t the first volcano to dominate the Valley’s skyline.
Millions of years ago, a 10,000-foot-tall volcanic cone stood on the Cascade Ridge near Chinook Pass. Today, Fife’s Peaks are visible from State Route 410, and people might not realize the significance.
“You can’t drive through the Cascades without driving through a volcano,” said Stephen Reidel, a retired Washington State University geologist.
The Cascades, which actually run from California into British Columbia, are the result of plate tectonics. As North America slides over the Pacific plate, heat and pressure build up under the continent’s leading edge, with volcanoes forming as vents and earthquakes shaking the ground as the plates grind against each other.
It’s this phenomenon that gives the Pacific Rim the nickname “Ring of Fire.”
In geologic terms, the current volcanoes are the new kids on the block, having formed 10 million years ago.
The entire process has been going on for 37 million years, when the first volcanoes formed.
Reidel said some of the peaks in the Cascades were — and are — composites of lava and volcanic “ash” built up through repeated eruptions.
Fife’s Peaks, named for prospector and mountain man Tom Fife who settled in nearby Goose Prairie, are the remnants of a 23-million-year-old volcano. And that wasn’t even the first volcano on the site.
To a trained geologist, it is apparent that Fife’s Peaks sprung up out of the remains of an earlier volcano, based on the colors of the rock and the difference in lava flows. Reidel said that volcano, the Stevens Ridge volcano, was the size of Mount Rainier, but had eroded to its base by the time Fife’s volcano began erupting.
Comparing the remains of Fife’s Peaks’ lava flows with today’s mountains, the ancient volcano would have been 10,000 feet tall, roughly the size of Mount Adams and clearly visible from prehistoric Yakima Valley.
“It would have been scary,” Reidel said, with its closer proximity to the area than Mount Adams.
But in time, wind and water broke down the volcano, leaving the current peaks, and Reidel said that in several million years Mount Adams and Mount Rainier will experience similar fates.
Today, there’s a good pulloff to see Fife’s Peaks just west of the Hells Crossing campground on 410.
