Hike Mount Jo in the Adirondack Mountains, near Lake Placid, North Elba, New York, USA. Beautiful Heart Lake and Adirondak Loj (an historic lodge) lie at the foot of Mount Jo (2876 ft or 877 m elev), which is on land owned by the Adirondack Mountain Club (AMC). With a sweeping vista of the Great Range, Mt Jo offers one of the best views for the effort in the Adirondacks: ascend 710 feet or 216 m from the Loj in 2.6 miles roundtrip. From atop Mt. Jo, see the surrounding High Peaks Wilderness Area, a state Forest Preserve protected within Adirondack Park. Adirondack Park is the largest park in the contiguous USA and is the largest National Historic Landmark. Geologic history: The Adirondacks are very new mountains from old rocks, uplifting in a circular dome (160 miles wide and 1 mile high) over just the past 5 million years. Geologically, the Adirondacks are NOT in the Appalachians: instead, they are part of the Canadian Shield (or Laurentian or Precambrian Shield which underlies half of Canada). The Adirondacks are still rising fast, up to 3 mm per year, with a central core (High Peaks region) of intrusive igneous rock, Anorthosite (not common at Earth's surface but common on the Moon's surface), surrounded by a massive dome of 1-billion-year-old metamorphic gneiss rock, in turn surrounded by some younger sedimentary rocks. In contrast, the unrelated Appalachians have mostly younger sedimentary rocks, yet are among the world's oldest mountains and are no longer uplifting. The panorama was stitched from 9 overlapping photos.
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