[1] The mountain was named by James Hector in 1858 in recognition of Scottish geologist Sir Charles Lyell.

[4] Mount Lyell is located on the Great Divide, which forms the BC-Alberta boundary in this area, in Banff National Park.

[3] The mountain is the highest in the Lyell Group, a subrange of the Central Icefields in the Canadian Rockies.

Mount Lyell is composed of sedimentary rock laid down during the Precambrian to Jurassic periods.

[8] Geology for all five subpeaks is identical due to their proximity to the central peak (maximum distance: 1.6 km or 1 mile).