8/4 - Mount St Helens

The weather was beautiful today as we headed up to Mount St. Helens, except it was surprisingly hazy.  We didn't expect to find WNC-style air pollution here but don't know what else it could be.  By the afternoon it had improved quite a bit.
                 

Mount St. Helens blew apart on May 18, 1980, 123 years after its last eruption.  It didn't blow its top.....the entire north side disintegrated and blew out, causing the most destructive landslides ever recorded in this country. This lateral eruption caused a lot more damage than would have occurred if it had been vertical. The eruption continued for nine hours and blew material 80,000 feet into the atmosphere where it traveled around the world in 15 days. This mountain is the most active volcano in the Cascade Range and has a good chance of erupting again in our lifetime.


                             
Very hazy view of Mount St. Helens this morning which I'm including just because it's got the best shot of the devastated river valley. The North Fork of the Toutle River bore the brunt of the blast's landslides. Even after 36 years the damage is still very noticeable with the area around the river covered in ash and pumice.


One of the most interesting and surprising things we learned about the eruption is what happened to its noise. Seeing pictures of the eruption, I thought the noise must have been horrendous, however no one within 60 miles of the mountain could hear it.  Its blast was heard from 60 miles to as far away as Canada and Missoula, MT. The blast was so ferocious and there was so much material going up, the sound waves were muffled in the material plus they were thrown upwards into the atmosphere where they were bounced back down in a wave that landed them much further away. 


There were a number of people who witnessed the blast, took pictures of it and survived with their cameras and film. These pictures and the witnesses' reports were invaluable in helping scientists piece together exactly how the mountain came apart. They also confirmed the eruption was completely silent for those close enough to see it.


Some of the witnesses were friends who were hiking up Mount Adams 35 miles away. They saw the explosion but couldn't hear a thing. They got a lot of pictures, then got in an argument about finishing their climb to the top of Mt. Adams which they'd been chased off before by weather conditions. Very shortly they realized the ash cloud was heading for them and they'd better get off the mountain. Within minutes it was pitch black....they put on their head lamps and still couldn't see....then they were on their hands and knees trying to follow their footprints in the snow. They finally all got back safely but it must have been an incredibly frightening experience.

Mount Adams, 35 miles from Mount St. Helens,  where some of the witnesses to the eruption were climbing.

This afternoon's view of the mountain was much clearer.  The north side was the area that blew apart in the eruption. Everything around it is still devastated. The mountain's top 1300 feet blew out in the landslides. In the center of the picture is the crater which now has a new 1,300 foot lava dome building up in it as well as a new glacier around the dome. Crater Glacier is the only actively growing glacier in the Cascade Range.

Another view of the blast zone to the east of the volcano. The blast was so strong it peeled the topsoil off parts of the area leaving bare rock.

The line between Weyerhaeuser's reforested land and the land belonging to the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument which is being kept natural. There's a lot of scientific research going on around the mountain between the natural area being managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser's active forest management. 

We stopped at Weyerhaeuser's Forest Learning Center on the way up. They own 68,000 acres in the devastated area and it was really interesting to see what they had done after the eruption. Within one month they were already salvaging blown down trees. (They had to be salvaged quickly before disease or insects got into them and made the wood unusable for lumber.) They continued to do salvaging for two years, eventually recovering 850 million board feet of lumber from 45,500 acres, enough to build 85,000 three-bedroom homes.  Along with salvaging, they planted 18.4 million new seedlings by hand. With their forestry management practices which include thinning and fertilizing (in ways that protect streams and prevent erosion), they've grown trees faster and bigger than before and have been able to harvest sooner than they expected. We were very impressed with what they've done.

Waiting and waiting and waiting......  The visitor center was really busy when we left so there were probably a lot more people behind us than in front. We don't know how long the project will take, but the only road up to the visitor center is being repaved. The UPS truck going up as we were going down was going to be lucky if it made it by closing. 

It looked like it would probably take many days more so we can't say we got trapped on the only day they were doing it.  However, it did add at least 1 1/2 hours to our 2 1/4 hour round trip. Seeing the mountain and all the information about it was definitely worth every minute of the wait, though.

Tomorrow we head for Troutdale, Oregon, with our fingers still crossed that Camping World will have the part Jim needs to fix our water system.