June 21, 2007

June 21, 2007

It is foggy and drizzling this morning. We were going to explore the north coast headlands at Cape Disappointment but the weather is going to make visibility poor. So instead we head inland up the Columbia River towards I-5. There we go north to the exit for Mt. St. Helens Volcanic National Monument. On the road east there are five Visitor Centers. The first one is state. We decide to skip it until this evening. The second one seems to be just a commercial outfit. They do have an interesting compilation of the news stories at the time. Weyerhauser who does most of the logging in the area runs the third. Their attendant suggested we go to the mountain first since the weather is forecasted to get worse. It is not raining here but the clouds are looking ominous. And unfortunately St. Helens’ top is in the clouds.

The drive up follows the Toutle River. It is small and murky with banks that look like volcanic dust. I am surprised after 27 years it is still choked with ash. The end of the line is the Johnston Ridge Observatory. There I find out that the National Forest Service runs this monument and again my National Parks pass doesn’t work here. And the admission price is steep. Despite having another month left on the pass, I am forced to buy the new combined agency pass. I guess I shouldn’t complain as I saved a ton of money with the old pass over the last 11 months.

At the observatory we first listen to a ranger talk about the eruption. The ranger is a young woman who saw the eruption as a girl and was motivated to become a geologist. Now she works here in the summer and in Hawaii Volcano Park in the winter. My kind of job! She gives a very entertaining talk with a series of poster-size photos. Mt. St. Helens used to be the Mt. Fuji of the USA with a perfect snow-capped conical top. It has also been the most active of the Cascade Range volcanoes. The lava at this volcano is very thick and doesn’t flow well. The pressure buildup tends to release explosively. In early 1980 it started acting up and grew a huge magma bulge on its side. An earthquake triggered the bulge to fall off in the largest landslide in recorded history. The landslide filled in the Toutle River valley washing away 26 of 27 bridges across it. With the pressure cap off, Mt St. Helens then blew sideways leveling the forest north for miles. Now the volcano was free to spew ash and poisonous gasses out its stack, which it did for the rest of the day. Primordial Destruction!

Afterwards we watch a movie about the eruption in the observatory theater. It is well designed, for when the show ends, the curtain rises and we see the volcano on display out the window. The top is still in clouds though. We walk a little bit of the trail in the area. Even after 27 years this part is still barren of trees. Patches of beautiful purple wildflowers cover this ridge. On other ridges we can see downed logs littering the slopes like toothpicks.

A few miles back down the road we stop at the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center where we listen to another excellent ranger talk. This crusty old character gives a highly entertaining talk about life before the eruption. The area used to be a beautiful fishing and camping spot for locals. The centerpiece, Spirit Lake, is still full of logs and debris. Below us is Coldwater Lake. It is brand new, formed when the landslide dammed up Coldwater Creek.

The cloud over the top of St. Helens has gotten smaller but it hasn’t budged an inch. It looks like I am not going to get a clear shot of the crater so we head back down the road. We make a short stop at the Forest Learning Center before it closes to watch a couple short films on logging operations. Then we spend the night at a small RV park a little further down the road.