Together with Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, and Mount St. Helens, the Goat Rocks volcano is part of a triangle of volcanoes, an arrangement not found elsewhere in the Cascades. This may be related to a mid-crust zone with abnormally high electrical conductivity, the Southern Washington Cascades Conductor (SWCC), which is not well understood by geologists. Scientists from the United States Geodynamics Committee hypothesized in 1994 that this anomaly is associated with the thrust of a large deposit of sedimentary rock against a continental margin. However, Hill et al. (2009) dismiss this view as it proves inconsistent with maps made from magnetotelluric readings of the area. Instead, they propose that the anomaly is linked to the region's volcanism, which has caused partial melting of the crust.