The Cascade Range is dramatic mostly from afar. The overcast makes Mt Rainer on the east and the Olympics on the west invisible. No drama today. I start a discussion of the Olympic Peninsula. The Cascades are young volcanos fed by melting of one continental plate being pushed down under another. Most people assume the Olympics are also volcanic. They are actually upthrust seabed formed by another effect of plate tectonics. The terrain is also some of the most unusual in North America.
There is a valley on the northwest side facing the Pacific leading to the only temperate (non-equatorial) rainforest in North America. The ferns and toadstools and alien looking underbrush are strange enough. When you turn your eyes up hill through a break in the canopy you are utterly stunned. There is a glacier at the head of the valley. How many places in the world can you hike from a rainforest to a glacier and back in a day?
Another marvel exists near the Pacific entrance to this valley. Boulders the size of houses are strewn all over the tidewater and salt & pepper pebbled beach. The view is all the more surreal since most of the giant rocks are exposed as if they were just deposited there by some recent upheaval.
The Olympics by car or foot offer many accessible and immediate vistas. The Cascades from the train are another matter. The closer you get, the more the view pancakes to extremely close in sights. You will see babbling brooks, cliffs, forrest walls, and glances at the mountain reservoir you are cruising beside. Undeniably beautiful on a compressed close in scale.
The 2+ hour visibility of Mt. Shasta and the surrounding chaotic terrain is arguably a much more arresting and unforgettable sight. The timing is perfect on the northbound Coast Starlight in the summer.
