A number of related volcanoes are adjacent to Heart Peaks and form an extensive volcanic zone over 1,000 km (620 mi) long.

[4] Earth's lithosphere consists of several large tectonic plates, which slowly move towards and away from one another, either converging and subducting or diverging and rifting; volcanoes and earthquakes are generated by these activities.

[7] As the Pacific Plate moves northward to the Aleutian subduction zone, it generates rifting in the North American continent.

[2] The nearly oval-shaped Heart Peaks shield volcano is made of basalt and trachybasalt with a composite thickness up to 430 m (1,410 ft); pyroclastic rocks are also present.

[10] A series of steep-sided lava domes composed of porphyritic rhyolite and minor trachyte are situated on the western flank of Heart Peaks and display colours such as light green and pink.

[2] Heart Peaks is over five times larger than the Mount Meager massif in southwestern British Columbia, the largest stratovolcano by volume in the Garibaldi Volcanic Belt.

[12] Because of its remote location, Heart Peaks is accessed by helicopter from the small communities of Atlin and Dease Lake.

[16] The exact age of Heart Peaks is not known, but its first volcanic phase occurred during the Neogene period (between 23 and 2.5 million years ago).

In the Finlay River and Dease Lake areas, two tephra deposits are situated between sand, silt, mud and gravel.

They are both phonolitic to trachytic in composition and high in iron(II) oxide, indicating that the tephras were possibly erupted from a single volcano.

This indicates that the Finlay tephras are Early Holocene in age and were deposited shortly after the regional Fraser Glaciation retreated.

[16] The Finlay tephras are largely composed of elements most similar to those of Hoodoo Mountain, a flat-topped volcano that formed subglacially at least 100,000 years ago.

Because Heart Peaks and nearby Level Mountain have been poorly studied and it is unknown if they contain Holocene age volcanic rocks, they are also possible sources for the Finlay tephras.

A series of gold-bearing quartz veins were discovered in 1980 within a zone of argillic alteration covering an area of more than 3 km2 (1.2 sq mi).

[15] Like other volcanoes in the Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province, Heart Peaks is not monitored closely enough by the Geological Survey of Canada to ascertain how active its magma system is.

[23] If it were to erupt there would likely be weeks, months or years of warning signs, such as clusters of minor earthquakes that would likely originate less than 15 km (9.3 mi) below the surface.