Alaska volcanoes on the Ring of Fire

Alaskan Volcanoes

Alaska sits on and encompasses the entire northern arc of the "Ring of Fire." We have 80% of the volcanoes in the U.S. and 10% of all found in the world. On June 6th, 1912, Mt. Novarupta (2,759 feet-not pictured) exploded and became the largest eruption ever recorded … remaining to date the largest even now over a century later. The eruption lasted for 60 hours, darkened the Northern Hemisphere for several days, and dropped a foot of ash on Kodiak 100-miles away. The ash cloud erupted 100,00 feet in the air, falling ash covered Seattle three days later, eventually drifting over Africa. Mt. Novarupta, located southwest of Anchorage in Katmai National Park, dumped 700 feet of ash over a 40-square-mile area creating the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Closer to Anchorage there are several volcanoes, many of which have erupted within the past half-century. Below are a variety of images of the five closest:

Mt. Redoubt (10,197 feet) – Cook Inlet/cone-shaped/aerial-view erupting/sunsets and flight at left/far peak in panorama of aurora.
Mt. Spurr (11,070 feet) – Cook Inlet/closest to Anchorage/scenes top center to right/umbrella-shaped eruption.
Mt. Iliamna (10,016 feet) – Cook Inlet/South of Redoubt/visible in all largest panoramas/closest view, sunrise panorama at bottom.
Mt. Augustine (4134 feet) – Island cone-volcano/SW Cook Inlet, shown in the second row of images at bottom.
Mt. Wrangell (14,163 feet) – In the 13.2-million-acre Wrangell-St. Elias National Park/east of Anchorage/center-left with lenticular "stack-of-plates"’ clouds.

All images © Dave Parkhurst www.TheAlaskaCollection.com