Lava Flows

The next eruption of Mount Baker may produce lava flows, pyroclastic flows, tephra falls, lahars, and flanks failures.

Mount Baker is the youngest volcano of a larger, multivent, volcanic field that has remained recurrently active for the past 1.3 million years.

Mount Baker is largely constructed of lava flows, with the youngest summit lava flows (between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago) found in the Baker and Sulphur Creek drainages and perhaps in the Glacier Creek drainage.

The eruptive history of the Mount Baker volcanic field is virtually continuous from 1.3 million years ago to the present, and it includes at least 25 discrete eruptive vents and >100 intruded dikes.

Black Buttes, an arc-shaped ridge of craggy peaks, is the remnant of a large stratovolcano that stood in approximately the same location as Mount Baker, only higher.

Mount Baker's edifice consists mostly of lava flows (as many as 200), and scattered evidence indicates that some of its products were broken up and carried away by glaciers.

Mount Baker is presently not showing signs of renewed magmatic activity, but it will surely become restless again. Future magmatic eruptions at Mount Baker are likely to be preceded by changes at the volcano that could be detected by modern volcano-monitoring techniques.