Little Chief Mountain

Description

Little Chief Mountain is located the Lewis Range of Glacier National Park on the east side of the Continental Divide. It is situated at the west end of Saint Mary Lake and directly southeast of Going-to-the-Sun Mountain and south of Goat Mountain. Little Chief has over 5000 feet of vertical relief above the valley floor and St. Mary Lake. Little Chief Mountain was another of many mountains in this area named by George Bird Grinnell. In 1887, he honored Major Frank J. North (Little Chief) who was the Chief of the Pawnee Scouts in Nebraska during the 1860's.

The sedimentary rock of Little Chief Mountain was shaped by 1.6 billion years of geologic processes from sediment deposition, uplift, thrust faulting, and erosion by glaciers. The major geologic event that sculpted the landscape of Little Chief Mountain and the other peaks in Glacier National Park began approximately 2 million years ago when large ice sheets of the Pleistocene Ice Age repeatedly advanced and retreated until about 12,000 years ago.

Refer to a Climber's Guide to Glacier National Park, by J. Gordon Edwards for route information and special dangers because this is grizzly bear country.

Thanks to theyogiclimber for this description.