page_title: Silverthrone Caldera
section_title: Volcanic hazards
hierarchical_section_title: Silverthrone Caldera / Volcanic hazards
caption_attribution_description: English: Satellite photo of glaciers in the Silverthrone area including the Silverthrone Glacier.
context_page_description: The Silverthrone Caldera is a potentially active caldera complex in southwestern British Columbia, Canada, located over 350 kilometres northwest of the city of Vancouver and about 50 kilometres west of Mount Waddington in the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains. The caldera is one of the largest of the few calderas in western Canada, measuring about 30 kilometres long and 20 kilometres wide. Mount Silverthrone, an eroded lava dome on the caldera's northern flank that is 2,864 metres high, may be the highest volcano in Canada.
  The main glaciers in the Silverthrone area are the Pashleth, Kingcome, Trudel, Klinaklini and Silverthrone glaciers. Most of the caldera lies in the Ha-Iltzuk Icefield, which is the largest icefield in the southern half of the Coast Mountains; it is one of the five icefields in southwestern British Columbia that thinned between the mid-1980s and 1999 due to global warming. Nearly half of the icefield is drained by the Klinaklini Glacier, which feeds the Klinaklini River.
  The Silverthrone Caldera is very remote and rarely visited or studied by geoscientists, such as volcanologists.
context_section_description: Volcanic eruptions in Canada rarely cause fatalities because of their remoteness and low level of activity. The only known fatality due to volcanic activity in Canada occurred at the Tseax Cone in 1775, when a 22.5-kilometre-long (14.0 mi) lava flow traveled down the Tseax and Nass Rivers, destroying a Nisga'a village and killing approximately 2,000 people by volcanic gases. Towns and cities south of Silverthrone are home to well over half of British Columbia's human population, and there is a likelihood that future eruptions will cause damage to populated areas, making Silverthrone and other Garibaldi belt volcanoes further south a major potential hazard. For this reason, additional projects to study Silverthrone and other Garibaldi belt volcanoes to the south are being planned by the Geological Survey of Canada. There are significant hazards from almost all Canadian volcanoes that require hazard maps and emergency plans. Volcanoes which exhibit significant seismic activity, such as Silverthrone, appear to be most likely to erupt. A significant eruption of any of the Garibaldi belt volcanoes would significantly impact Highway 99 and communities like Pemberton, Whistler and Squamish, and possibly Vancouver.
caption: Satellite image of the Silverthrone and Klinaklini glaciers
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