Mount Fee

Mount Fee is a volcanic peak in the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is 13 km south of Callaghan Lake and 21 km west of the popular resort town of Whistler. Standing tall at 2,162 meters, or 7,093 feet, it rises above the landscape along an alpine mountain ridge.

This mountain is part of a north-south volcanic field, with Mount Fee sitting right on its base. It has a narrow ridge made of fine-grained volcanic rock and some broken material. The ridge stretches 1.5 km long and is half a kilometer wide, with very steep sides. Mount Fee has two main summits—the southern one being the higher peak. Between these summits is a U-shaped crevice, making both towers look especially striking against the sky.

Geology

Mount Fee is one of the southernmost volcanoes in the Mount Cayley volcanic field. This area is part of the larger Garibaldi Volcanic Belt, stretching from the Silverthrone Caldera in the north to the Watts Point volcano in the south. The volcanic belt formed because of the Juan de Fuca Plate moving under the North American Plate along the Cascadia subduction zone.

Mount Fee looks the way it does today because glaciers shaped it over time. It was once a bigger volcano, but ice and rocks wore it down. What remains is a ridge made of strong rock called dacite. Nearby, The Black Tusk is another old volcano that also shows signs of being worn down by ice.

The volcano at Mount Fee is very old, formed more than 75,000 years ago. Scientists think it had at least three main periods of eruption long ago. The earliest eruption left behind small pieces of broken rock. Later eruptions created flows of thick lava that poured down the sides of the mountain. After each eruption, erosion and glaciers changed the land again.

The rocks at Mount Fee contain different minerals and glass, showing how the lava cooled and hardened long ago.

Human history

People have lived near Mount Fee for a very long time. They used special glassy rocks from the mountain to make sharp tools like knives. They also got rocks from nearby Mount Cayley and Mount Callaghan.

In 1928, a British climber named Tom Fyles named the mountain after Charles Fee. Charles was part of the British Columbia Mountaineering Club in Vancouver. In 1980, a scientist named Jack Souther showed Mount Fee as part of the Mount Cayley volcanic field.

Like other volcanoes in the Garibaldi Belt, Mount Fee is not watched closely. This is because Canada has not had big eruptions for over a hundred years, and the volcano is in a faraway place. Scientists think there would be signs before an eruption, like small earthquakes. But the machines that watch for earthquakes are too far away to give exact warnings. Scientists are still learning more about these volcanoes to get ready for any future activity.

Climate

Mount Fee is located in a special climate called the marine west coast. This climate is common in western North America. Most weather there starts in the Pacific Ocean and moves eastward. When the weather reaches the Cascade Range, it is forced upward, causing lots of rain and snow.

Winter can be very cold, with temperatures sometimes below −20 °C. The best time to climb Mount Fee is usually from July to September when the weather is nicer.