May 18th 1980

I was at Moclips checking clam diggers for cpue for management purposes. Ran into a lot of people running off the beach to check on their cabin down on the Toutle. Guess they were a bit late. We didn’t have a am radio in the vehicle so we just figured they were right that the mountain blew. A buddy of mine was fishing at Lenice. They saw “storm” clouds and thought they might need to leave soon. Then they saw red lightning and knew they had to leave. They spent a week in vantage at the cafe before they could leave.

The next week we were fishing the SolDuc when ash started to fall on us. Finished the drift and headed home to Montesano through the gray slop since it was raining too.

After we got back I asked my buddy where he was going to be the next weekend. He asked me why, I told him I wanted to go the opposite direction so I could avoid the ash fall. Figured two times in a row he had the bad luck to be in the ash.

Also took a drift on the Toutle a week before the first eruption. Great fishing that day, been missing the river ever since.
 
Day before was the sunrise keg at WWU. For some reason I was up early the next morning and heard it go off. Thought it was someone blasting or working on a road.
 
wanderingrichard said:
I'm not one of em
Click to expand...
I can't say that . . .

Forgot about the lovebirds who were parked not too far from the bar later that night. Got stuck in an ash-filled ditch & looked like death warmed over when they walked through the front door. A buddy and I pulled their car out and got them into town. Saw them a few weeks later with seemingly no ill effects from the adventure.
 
I was returning from a sales trip to Western Gear in Jamestown North Dakota. They diverted our flight south then around the Pacific Ocean. We were watching the mountain from the plane when the second eruption went off. What a site that was
 
I was living on our apple orchard in the west valley of Yakima. I remember that morning and day very wel. I had been worrying about frost that early morning knowing that there were no clouds coming in from the pacific. I was out setting water we used rill irrigation and the first sets of the year took time I was out and never heard any boom Or felt any ground movement. Frank my hired man said a storm is coming. When the cloud got here there was very wild lightning storm with all colors of lightning. Many wind machines were hit by it. I remember hearing stories at a meeting of the Yakima Flyfishers of people tossing their graphite fly rods. Seeing the lightnin. My neighbor Bob was fishing a beaver pond out in Tampico closer to the mountain and was glad to make it home he even had fur needles in the ash. I always think about standing in water holding a very conducive lightning rod. I also had Barred Rock Bantam chickens at the time and the dark came on so fast they just squatEd down in the run and I had to pick each up and shake the ash off them and throw them in the coop.
The next day the world was gray. The only contrast was a brown gopher mound. The gophers were a great enemy of rill irritating. But for once I was glad to see them. We went trough many trials that year.
 
I also vividly remember that day and was picking morel mushrooms in the Oregon Blue Mountains with my parents. As we headed home from the mountains, we noticed an unusual cloud plume from the west as we approached the Columbia River. Like others, spent time dealing with ash in SE Washington. At the time, I was a recent grad of the UW Geological Sciences school and knew of David Johnston who was killed in the blast and now is memorialized as the Johnson Ridge Observatory. I previously spent time as a student intern working on geological mapping around Spirit Lake, which was a beautiful place.
 
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