Mount Sanford

Mount Sanford is a massive shield volcano in eastern Alaska’s Wrangell Volcanic Field near the Copper River, ranking as the sixth highest mountain in the United States and the country’s third highest volcano. Its steep south face rises 8,000 feet in one mile above the Sanford Glacier, and most of its upper slopes are buried under extensive icefields. Built mainly of andesite beginning about 900,000 years ago, it later produced major rhyolite and basaltic flows, with the basalt eruption about 320,000 years ago regarded as its most recent activity. Named in 1885, it was first climbed in 1938 and was also the site of the 1948 crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 4422.

Slana, Alaska · United States