Sundial is a mountain

summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topography, topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used ...

located within Olympic National Park, in Jefferson County of Washington state. Sundial is part of The Needles range, which is a subrange of the Olympic Mountains. Its nearest higher neighbor is Mount Clark, to the northwest, and Mount Johnson is set to the west. The climbing routes on Sundial start at class 3 scrambling via the East Face, and range up to class 5 via the South Side Face. The first ascent of the mountain was made in 1944 by Adel and William Degenhardt. The mountain is so named because the time of day can be approximated as an observer in Royal Basin watches the sun's rays make their way down the east face of this mountain in the morning. Precipitation

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock market ...

from the mountain drains into Royal Creek which is a tributary of the Dungeness River.

Climate

Based on the Köppen climate classification, Sundial is located in the marine west coast climate zone of western

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. Most weather fronts originate in the Pacific Ocean, and travel northeast toward the Olympic Mountains. As fronts approach, they are forced upward by the peaks of the Olympic Range, causing them to drop their moisture in the form of rain or snowfall ( Orographic lift). As a result, the Olympics experience high precipitation, especially during the winter months. During winter months, weather is usually cloudy, but, due to high pressure systems over the Pacific Ocean that intensify during summer months, there is often little or no cloud cover during the summer. The months July through September offer the most favorable weather for climbing or viewing this peak.

Geology

The Olympic Mountains are composed of obducted

clastic Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus,Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-3 chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks ...

wedge material and oceanic crust, primarily Eocene sandstone, turbidite, and basaltic oceanic crust. The mountains were sculpted during the Pleistocene era by erosion and glaciers advancing and retreating multiple times.

Gallery

File:Sundial, Royal Basin.jpg, Sundial centered. Mt. Johnson and

Sweat Spire Sweat Spire is a 7,580-foot-elevation (2,310 meter) summit located in the Olympic Mountains, in Jefferson County of Washington state. It is situated within Olympic National Park, and is set within the Daniel J. Evans Wilderness. It is p ...

to left File:Sundial, subsidiary peak of Mt. Clark.jpg, Sundial, from the southeast File:Sundial in The Needles.jpg, Sundial in The Needles

References

External links

* {{cite web , url=http://www.nps.gov/olym , title=Olympic National Park , publisher=National Park Service * Sundial weather
National Weather Service
Olympic Mountains Mountains of Washington (state) Landforms of Olympic National Park North American 2000 m summits

Climate

Geology

Gallery

See also

References

External links