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Alaska's Mount Churchill volcano erupted some 1,200 years ago, spreading ash from Canada to Germany... Mount Churchill is also an impressive volcano, the tallest on land in the United States and one of the towering, snowy peaks of Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains. But Churchill's blast in A.D. 843 ejected just 12 cubic miles (50 cubic km) of ash, a layer now called the White River Ash, according to the new study, published in the September 2014 issue of the journal Geology... If moderate volcanic eruptions can spread ash for thousands of miles, then these blowouts may be more hazardous than...

The White River Ash blasted from giant eruptions somewhere in today's Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains, drifted as far away as Ireland and Germany... Ash from the White River eruptions, possibly from 15,638-foot Mount Churchill or at least close to it, left an easy-to-see mark on eastern Alaska and northwestern Canada. Explorer Frederick Schwatka documented the ash in 1885 in his book "Along Alaska's Great River." People driving the Klondike Highway pass more than two feet of the whitish grit exposed in road cuts on their journey through the Yukon Territory... Froese and Jensen traveled in the Yukon to a branch of...