West Elk Peak, a 13,042-foot mountain in western Colorado, is the highest summit in the West Elk Mountains and the dominant high point of a rugged volcanic range in the West Elk Wilderness northwest of Gunnison. Its history reaches back to the late Paleozoic, when the area lay along the eastern edge of the Uncompahgre highland, before deep sediment buried it during the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic. In the Oligocene, batholithic intrusions fed regional volcanoes, and volcanic breccia formed much of the peak about 35 to 30 million years ago. Later water, ice, and uplift carved the mountain, while limited coal mining occurred on its northern and eastern flanks.