MOUNT ST. HELENS

June 19, 2013

Sunset at Mt. St. Helens RV park

Today we traveled from Sequim, Washington to the Mt. St. Helens area.    We retraced our route on Highway 101 along the Hood River Canal.   It's a pretty drive.  We met up with I-5 south to get to the north side of Mt. St. Helen's.  We set up the RV and then headed out for a drive up the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway to Johnston's Ridge Observatory which is situated on the side of Mount. St. Helens where the lateral explosion from the eruption in 1980 occurred.   On a clear day you can see the volcano's crater and the lava dome that is rebuilding within it.  However, today was not a clear day up on the mountain and we were only able to see the lower part of the blast area.  We're hoping it will clear up tomorrow and we will go back.  Johnston's Ridge is named after the ham radio operator who volunteered to stay up on Mt. St. Helen's and report what was happening prior to the eruption.  No one really expected the lateral explosion that took out the entire side of the mountain.  Johnston died in the seconds after the blast, but not before radioing "Vancouver, Vancouver.  This is it!"   Scientists knew the eruption was imminent, but they had expected an upward explosion and possible landslides.  They didn't know there was so much pressure building within that when the landslide started, it released enough mass that the pressure inside would create an explosion from the side.   It's hard to even imagine the energy it took to literally move half of a mountain.  But that's what happened when the volcano erupted.   Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to get pictures if the clouds clear.  The blast zone is really sort of hard to describe.  Fifty-seven people died when the eruption occurred. Overlooking the valley and the portion of Mount St. Helens that is visible below the clouds, what happened over 30 years ago here is still clearly evident in the geography.

The picture above is taken from our RV park.  It was a pretty sunset and since I didn't get any pictures of Mount St. Helens, I thought I'd share this one.