SFR Mt St Helens - 45 Year Anniversary

[DimeBrite]

May 18th is coming up, and I watched this old news clip from the big eruption. It was such an iconic moment for PNW residents. The old video clips of resue helicopters flying over a gray moonscape and houses ripping down the Toutle River lahar are stunning. I was thrilled about the eruption as a child and wanted to see it up close. In 1986 the area was opened to visitors and I finally saw the massive damage in person. The original new lava dome was still steaming, fresh as a dung pile. In the 2000s I hiked up there several times. The most interesting was during the 2004-2008 dome building "eruption". Sitting on the summit rim in 2006 I could feel the mountain tremble as massive lobes of andesite rock slowly extruded. I'm amazed how quickly the vegetation, fish and wildlife bounced back. If you haven't done it yet, sign up for a climbing pass and go hike the mountain!

 

[Peyton00]

I was 10 yrs old and fascinated with the eruption. Collected jars of ash and cut out newspaper reports and headlines. I climbed it in 1999. I tossed out the old photo books and jars of ash a few years ago during a dump run.

 

[Yardus]

I was 10 as well. What a sight that mushroom cloud was. My wife was driving up from Oregon with her famliy and was one of the last cars to cross the Toutle at I-5 before it was closed. I imagine her dad was white knuckling that drive.

 

[Sir Homey]

Hiking the Loowit Trail still ranks up there as one of my favorite adventures. Traveling from the relatively untouched south side of the mountain into the blast zone was surreal. The complete circumnavigation is a must do for volcano enthusiasts and fans of physical punishment.
Add in a summit hike for a little extra spice.

 

[DimeBrite]

Hiking the Loowit Trail still ranks up there as one of my favorite adventures. Traveling from the relatively untouched south side of the mountain into the blast zone was surreal. The complete circumnavigation is a must do for volcano enthusiasts and fans of physical punishment.
Add in a summit hike for a little extra spice.

Yes, that is a great hike!


The Dave Crockett story is the one that amazed me the most from the 1980 eruption.

 

[Go Fish]

Fishing Coldwater Lake the thought of another
eruption is always floating in my head.

 

[Mossback]

 

[2MANY]

May 18th, 1980

I was camped at Mission Bar and springer fishing on the Cowlitz that weekend.
Saturday we killed it.
Sunday AM not a bite.
Then we saw the cloud with lightening striking in it and coming our way.
We loaded the sled up and raced up near the Toledo airport.
My dad rolled endless pictures with his 35mm.
We later learned there was no film in it. lol
Such an amazing, awesome experience.

Then in the late 90's I spent a summer, a winter, and another summer 8 miles behind the Coldwater Visitor Center's locked gate building Johnston Ridge Observatory.

Building it was a challenge.
All a large generator show with cellular (including fax) support at a time when cellular was far from perfect. Work made possible by an onsite concrete batch plant that had to get architecturally colored concrete to temperature at 4000'.
The building was cast in place with colored/sandblasted concrete placed in the battered radiused walls. Because of the irregular wall thicknesses we were forced to use color matching fiberglass snap ties. The storefront glass facing the mountain was rated for 150 MPH if I remember correctly and the theater was designed by George Lucas. The roof carry's a 3' section of volcanic debris to help the building blend in.

Johnston Ridge Observatory

1992–1997, U.S. Forest Service and Spencer Associates Architects and Planners; Charles Anderson Landscape Architects and EDAW Inc., landscape architects. 24000 Spirit Lake Hwy.

sah-archipedia.org

One of my favorite experiences was following a roof deck pour.
Concrete while it's curing generates heat which made for the perfect heated mattress.
Views and stars X1,000,000 made for an incredible sleep that night.
Unbelievable.

Snow was the norm and the weather tower blew over one day with the last recorded reading at 110 MPH.
It was the job of jobs for so many reasons.

Watching the elk and deer go through their winterkill was painful.
The salmon, steelhead, and trout fishing in the local tribs was smokin.
Mother nature is a master at recreating herself.

In the words of Forrest Gump, "And that's all I know about that".

 

[FinLuver]

Was camped on the upper Deschutes. It sounded like several dynamite explosions and could faintly feel it. As we drove home, we listened on the radio and we stopped at a family friend’s place in Sisters. The TV was on and we were glued to it. It was a year before graduating high school.

 

[SilverFly]

Geez, I was 19 living in the 'Couv. 19 and dumb like my buddy. A few weeks prior, just before they closed the Red Zone, we took his Datsun pickup up a logging road to a ridge just SW of the mountain. Got to see a small ash eruption from 6 miles away.

 

[Mossback]

I remember all the samsquanch running down the valleys trying to get away from the mountain....

What really happened on Mount St. Helens?

Mount St. Helens before the eruption (public domain photo) Of all the Sasquatch legends originating in the Pacific Northwest, there is one in particular that has captured the imagination of just about everyone who has heard it. It’s a tantalizing tale of exploding volcanoes, giant hairy beings...

sasquatchthelegend.com

 

[GAT]

We were visiting my Wife's Grandmother in Olympia when the mountain blew. I-5 was closed so we had to take a very long trip down 101 to Astoria. The bridge at Astoria was a traffic jam so it took about an hour just to get across the bridge.

While driving from Astoria to Portland we rounded a bend and there was Mt St. Helens in front of us with no top and ash coming out like a giant smoke stack. Let me tell you. There isn't much more impactful than seeing the top of a mountain completely gone and ash billowing out and into the sky. It was like Mordor.

I know I'll never forget that sight. You just don't see the top of mountain blown off like that very often.

 

[Brian Miller]

I have always thought these two photos of the Mt St Helens eruption from Panorama Point on Mt Rainier by some climbing acquaintances I knew in The Mountaineers "speak a thousand words".

 

[Paige]

I too was a 1969 baby, such a great experience for a kid, a few years later dad won a sight seeing flight over it, was incredibly fascinating, all those pictures disappeared some how

 

[Salmo_g]

I didn't even know it happened until later that afternoon. I had been talked into leading a pre-season scouting trip on the NF Stilly. I was joined by John Farrar, Tom Darling, and Steve Rajeff in my raft and floated from Swede Haven bridge down to Oso that day. Steve had recently started working at Sage Rod Company, and we were giving him an introduction to the PNW. On the way back upriver to get my truck, we stopped at the Whitehorse store and learned all about the mountain blowing up. It was some exciting TV watching that night.

 

[_WW_]

I was in Denver. Woke up to a fine dusting on the car.

 

[Brian Miller]

The Forsyth Glacier from the top of Dogs Head after getting dropped off by a USAF 304th Rescue Squadron chopper during a mission in the late 1970s.

Mt. St. Helens was sure a pretty mountain, but could be deceptive. IIRC the 2 climbers we were searching for were never found.
Dogs Head today

I didn't even know it happened until later that afternoon. I had been talked into leading a pre-season scouting trip on the NF Stilly. I was joined by John Farrar, Tom Darling, and Steve Rajeff in my raft and floated from Swede Haven bridge down to Oso that day. Steve had recently started working at Sage Rod Company, and we were giving him an introduction to the PNW. On the way back upriver to get my truck, we stopped at the Whitehorse store and learned all about the mountain blowing up. It was some exciting TV watching that night.

I was climbing with my ex on Castle Rock in Tumwater Canyon near Leavenworth that day. We were at the base of the route when we heard the boom but had no idea what happened. When we got to Logger's Ledge it looked like there was rain coming. Back at the car news of the eruption was all over the radio. We tried to go home via 97 over Blewett but got turned away by WSP at the intersection with Highway 2. We were told we had to go over Stevens because the ashfall had created zero visibility conditions on I90.

 

[Paul_]

Posted a few years ago-

Thread 'Lakes of Mt. St. Helens'

Feb 14, 2022

• Paul_
• Replies: 20
• Forum: Lakes

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[Doublebluff]

I had worked at the Cowlitz salmon hatchery the summer and year before, primarily as a scuba diver vacuuming up fish poop in the raceways. A crazy job by the way. I was a fisheries major at UW, and the week before the eruption I led a field trip to the hatchery for a class we were in. My little brother and I stuck around and camped after that event, I think at Ike Kinswa park. The morning of the eruption we were driving to go fish on a bridge just below Mossyrock Dam. We came around a corner and.... WTF? We were staring at the ash plume, already huge in the sky. We didn't hear it at all. We stayed behind the roadblocks all day, slowly working our way back to I-5. I remember playing football catch at the Mayfield Dam overlook during the heavy ash snow, and RV's with inches of ash on their bumpers. Alas, no camera.

 

[Eastside]

My family was picking morel mushrooms in the Blue Mountains. Driving home to the Tri-Cities, there was a strange, dark cloud along the Columbia River and Dad turned on the radio in our little brown VW Squareback to hear the news of the eruption. Before the eruption, I had summited St Helens three times. It was a beautiful mountain to climb and we could glissade almost back to the parking lot.