It is 83 km (52 mi) southeast of the small community of Telegraph Creek in what is now the Klappan Range of the northern Skeena Mountains.

This incipient rifting formed as a result of the Pacific Plate sliding northward along the Queen Charlotte Fault, on its way to the Aleutian Trench.

[4] As the continental crust stretched, the near surface rocks fractured along steeply dipping cracks parallel to the rift known as faults.

This geologic province forms part of the Ring of Fire, an area where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur along the Pacific Ocean.

[1] Following the onset of activity at Edziza, Maitland volcanism commenced 5.2 million years ago with the outpouring of alkali basalt and hawaiite lava on a broad, late Tertiary, low-relief surface.

Subsequent volcanic activity created a complex edifice of trachyte and trachybasalt that formerly overlain the central part of the basaltic shield.

With the cessation of volcanic activity, Maitland Volcano was unable to protect itself from erosion by providing a cover of younger lavas on top of the older shield.

The Bowser Lake Group sedimentary rocks are shale, sandstone, conglomerate and siltstone, which were deposited in marine and non-marine environments during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

[3] Erosional remnants of lava flows from Maitland Volcano are present as scattered, cliff-bounded cappings on higher mountains of the Klappan Range.

Aphyric to slightly feldspar-phyric basalt is the primary volcanic rock, although greenish-grey trachybasalt and pale green trachyte form the uppermost flows of thick sections.

As a result, they speculated that the remnants were not the remains of a continuous blanket of basaltic lava but fragments of individual flows poured out on a surface of considerable relief.

[6] These lava flow remnants were subsequently mapped in greater detail by Jack Souther in 1972 and later by Hu Gabrielse and Howard Tipper in 1984.