Portal:Mountains

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Introduction

View of the south side of the Santa Catalina Mountains as seen from Tucson, Arizona.
View of the south side of the Santa Catalina Mountains as seen from Tucson, Arizona.
Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain

A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher than a hill, typically rising at least 300 metres (980 ft) above the surrounding land. A few mountains are isolated summits, but most occur in mountain ranges.

Mountains are formed through tectonic forces, erosion, or volcanism, which act on time scales of up to tens of millions of years. Once mountain building ceases, mountains are slowly leveled through the action of weathering, through slumping and other forms of mass wasting, as well as through erosion by rivers and glaciers.

High elevations on mountains produce colder climates than at sea level at similar latitude. These colder climates strongly affect the ecosystems of mountains: different elevations have different plants and animals. Because of the less hospitable terrain and climate, mountains tend to be used less for agriculture and more for resource extraction, such as mining and logging, along with recreation, such as mountain climbing and skiing.

The highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Asia, whose summit is 8,850 m (29,035 ft) above mean sea level. The highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars at 21,171 m (69,459 ft). (Full article...)

A kame near Kirriemuir, Scotland

A kame, or knob, is a glacial landform, an irregularly shaped hill or mound composed of sand, gravel and till that accumulates in a depression on a retreating glacier, and is then deposited on the land surface with further melting of the glacier. Kames are often associated with kettles, and this is referred to as kame and kettle or knob and kettle topography. The word kame is a variant of comb (kame, or kaim is the Old Scottish word for comb), which has the meaning "crest" among others. The geological term was introduced by Thomas Jamieson in 1874.

According to White, "kames were formed by meltwater which deposited more or less washed material at irregular places in and along melting ice. At places the material is very well washed and stratified; at others it is more poorly washed, with inclusions of till masses that fell from ice but were covered before they were completely washed. Kame gravels thus tend to be variable and range from fine to coarse grained and even to cobbly and boulder." (Full article...)

Selected mountain range

North Shore Mountains from Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver

The North Shore Mountains are a mountain range overlooking Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. Their southernmost peaks are visible from most areas in Vancouver and form a distinctive backdrop for the city.

The steep southern slopes of the North Shore Mountains limit the extent to which the municipalities of Metro Vancouver's North Shore (West Vancouver, the District of North Vancouver, the City of North Vancouver and the Village of Lions Bay) can grow. In many places on the North Shore, residential neighbourhoods abruptly end and rugged forested slopes begin. These forested slopes are crisscrossed by a large network of trails including the Baden-Powell Trail, the Howe Sound Crest Trail, the Binkert/Lions Trail and a wide variety of mountain biking trails. (Full article...)

Selected mountain type

Oblique aerial photo of a hogback located between Gallup and Ramah in western New Mexico.

In geology and geomorphology, a hogback or hog's back is a long, narrow ridge or a series of hills with a narrow crest and steep slopes of nearly equal inclination on both flanks. Typically, the term is restricted to a ridge created by the differential erosion of outcropping, steeply dipping (greater than 30–40°), homoclinal, and typically sedimentary strata. One side of a hogback (its backslope) consists of the surface (bedding plane) of a steeply dipping rock stratum called a dip slope. The other side (its escarpment, frontslope or "scarp slope") is an erosion face that cuts through the dipping strata that comprises the hogback. The name "hogback" comes from the Hog's Back of the North Downs in Surrey, England, which refers to the landform's resemblance in outline to the back of a hog. The term is also sometimes applied to drumlins and, in Maine, to both eskers and ridges known as "horsebacks".

Hogbacks are a typical regional topographic expression of outcrops of steeply dipping strata, commonly sedimentary strata, that consist of alternating beds of hard, well-lithified strata, i.e. sandstone and limestone, and either weak or loosely cemented strata, i.e. shale, mudstone, and marl. The surface of a hard, erosion-resistant layer forms the back slope (dip-slope) of the hogback where weaker strata have been preferentially stripped off of it by erosion. The opposite slope that forms the front of a hogback, which is its escarpment or scarp, consists of a slope that cuts across the bedding of the strata. Because of the steeply dipping nature of the strata that forms a hogback, a slight shift in location may take place as the landscape is lowered by erosion, but it will be a matter of feet rather than miles, as might happen with cuestas. (Full article...)

Selected climbing article

Two people glissading while sitting

Glissading is the act of descending a steep snow- or scree-covered slope via a controlled slide on one's feet or buttocks. It is an alternative to other descent methods such as plunge stepping, and may be used to expedite a descent, or simply for the thrill. Glissading involves higher risks of injuries than other forms of descending. Glissading with crampons is especially dangerous and should never be attempted. (Full article...)

General images

The following are images from various mountain-related articles on Wikipedia.

Selected skiing article

A ski area is the terrain and supporting infrastructure where skiing and other snow sports take place. Such sports include alpine and cross-country skiing, snow boarding, tubing, sledding, etc. Ski areas may stand alone or be part of a ski resort. (Full article...)

Subcategories

Mountains
Mountains by city
Mountains by continent
Mountains by country
Mountains by height
Mountains by mountain range
Lists of mountains
Mountain ranges
Biblical mountains
Coats of arms with mountains
Mountains in culture
Montane ecology
Extraterrestrial mountains
Geologic domes
Mountain geomorphology
Highlands
Hill and mountain resorts
Kames
Mountain lakes
Mountain meteorology
Mountain view points
Mountaineering
Mountain names
Nunataks
Mountain passes
Promontories
Mountain railways
Seven Summits
Seven Second Summits
Seven Third Summits
Mountain spurs
Mountain tunnels
Mountain stubs
Wikipedia categories named after mountains

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Topics

NASA Landsat-7 imagery of Himalayas
NASA Landsat-7 imagery of Himalayas
Shivling
Shivling
Eruption of Pinatubo 1991

Flora and fauna

Climbing in Greece
Climbing in Greece

Lists of mountains

Recognized content

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