OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK: Lithosphere of the Olympic National Park

Adjacent to the forest lays a strip of sandy and rugged beaches that range from 73 miles long and a couple miles wide. Such well known beaches such as the rialto and kalaloch beaches are easily accessible to tourists than the inner part of the forest. These beaches contain massive and heavy boulders with rocks that are only 40 million years young. The mixture of the sea-floor basalts with the deposition of material that comes from the Earth’s surface help make these sedimentary rocks found on these beaches and trenches. Most of the sediment found here comes from the rivers that drain the peninsula.

Photo credit: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geosc10/l3_p3.html

Photo credit: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/15659408

Photo credit: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1223930

Mount Olympus is just one product of the accretionary wedge uplifting that rises a mere 7,965 feet above sea level. Basically the accretionary wedge are sediments shaped into a wedge like form that are scraped form the oceanic surface that make their way beneath the continent that contribute to the continental edge.

Mount Olympus is part of the North American Cordillera which was formed from the compressional stresses of the tectonic plates pushing against each other which ultimately produced the gradually gathered sediments to uplift and form into mountains.