Mount Susitna

Mountain in Alaska, United States

Mount Susitna, also known as Sleeping Lady, (Dena'ina: Dghelishla) is a 4396 feet (1340 m) mountain in the U. S. state of Alaska. It is located on the west bank of the lower Susitna River, about 33 mile (53 km) northwest of Anchorage, Alaska.

Mount Susitna is often called Sleeping Lady for its resemblance to a recumbent woman. The mountain is associated with a local legend in which a woman belonging to a race of giants vows to sleep until her beloved comes back from battle. The first known printing of the local legend was written by Nancy Lesh and published in 1962. In "A Dena'ina Legacy," Dena'ina elder Peter Kalifornsky tells the story of the Mountain People who gathered at Susitna, and a giant lady who said she would lie down by the river she loved to become Susitna Mountain. Her relatives followed, Kalifornsky said, to become Mount Redoubt, Mount Iliamna and the Chigmit Mountain Range. Another wandered inland to become Denali. The Anchorage bowl topography has been influenced by 5 7 glaciations. Over several thousand years, thick ice sheets from the Talkeetna, Chugach and Alaska Ranges flowed down Cook Inlet. The five well documented glaciations from oldest to most recent were the Mt Susitna, Caribou Hills, Eklutna, Knik and Naptowne. The earliest glaciation in the Anchorage area is known as the Mount Susitna for the erratics and other glacial features found on the top of Mount Susitna. This is the time period when it obtained its characteristic streamlined shape. It is dated to the late Pliocene to the early Pleistocene (2 6 million years ago).

Mt. Susitna is part of a suite of Jurassic plutons of quartz monzonite to granodiorite composition.