Glacier Peak, WA, USA, 1:25000

Why did I want to climb Glacier Peak? Aside from its obvious beauty is the fact that this mountain has always had an air of mystery to me. Unlike its other Northwest counterparts such as Mount Rainier, Baker etc., Glacier Peak cannot be easily accessed by paved roads. You can't just jump in your car and make a day trip out of it. It takes at least 15 miles of hard hiking just to approach this mountain, which is the centerpiece of a wilderness area roughly the size of Rhode Island, so a multi-day trip is going to be the minimum to be able to experience it. I had been reading about Glacier Peak all my life in hiking guidebooks and whatever I could get my hands on, and while I have climbed other volcanoes up and down the Cascade Range, I had yet to attempt this one. Now just felt like the right time to do it.

The other facet of Glacier Peak that attracted me in a big way is that scientists consider it the most explosive of the Cascade Range volcanoes after Mount St. Helens. Because of its remoteness, Glacier Peak has the least amount of monitoring equipment and is still a big mystery to geologists whose job is to study it for potential future eruptions. It is known that Glacier Peak had five successive and very violent eruptions around 13,000 years ago which spread volcanic ash as far away as Alberta, Canada. Smaller outbursts went on over the millennia until the early to mid-1700s, so Glacier Peak has been dormant for only 300 years. Whether it stays that way remains to be seen.

I hope that helps you understand my attraction to this magnificent Northwest volcano and why I'm looking forward to commemorating my inaugural climb of it with this TinyMtn model.

Text by D. Stockton

Model scale is 1:25000
Model covers an area approximately 3.7 by 3.7 miles
Altitudes covered: 4366' to 10525'
There is no vertical exaggeration applied to this model. This is a true-to-life scale model of a real place.

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TinyMtn models are most affordable in the "Sandstone" and "White Strong and Flexible" materials. This model is in "Sandstone," which is a glued gypsum material. When you receive the model it will be ready for display, though it may smell funny and need some time to air out. "Sandstone" models are much more brittle than "White Strong and Flexible" models, but feel more like light stone. Do not soak it in water, though you can safely seal it with Polycrylic or a similar water-based clear spray sealant. Read more about this popular material here.

These models have been optimized for the above materials, and are not offered in other materials for strength or cost reasons. If you need one in another material, please tinymtnbiz@gmail.com and we'll do our best to fulfill your request.

(C) 2016 TinyMtn (TM)
Model created using GDAL, NetPBM, Gmsh, Carve, MeshLab, and other custom software
Source of digital elevation and aerial orthoimagery data: U.S. Geological Survey
The USGS home page is https://www.usgs.gov/