Trip to Mt Saint Helens Volcano

This trip was another one that I had been pushing BB to do, like the trip to Eastern Oregon in April. I don't know how many people we told of our failed trip exactly a year ago, but I have been wanting to go back ever since. Last year, I didn't research which way we should take first so one Sunday last June, we just set off, following the directions in our hiking guide. When we got up to the mountain, the road was gone, huge crater in its place. Wiped out by a landslide during the heavy rains. So this time, we made it.

This is Coldwater Lake, one of the lakes created during an eruption by Mt. Saint Helens. Mt Saint Helens is a very active volcano, erupting 16 times in 400 years.

You could actually walk out on the lake. They don't know which eruption blocked up the valley and filled it with water. Spirit Lake and Crystal Lake were created the same way.

This shows some of the destruction of the landscape. Where there were trees, they were dead but there were some very small trees. At one stop, we saw where the landslide and lava flow had basically turned a valley into rock. We saw a bunch of elk down on this plain, but only in the viewfinder so no pictures of that.

This was taken from the Johnston Ridge Observatory, the farthest you can drive up to the volcano. The ridge gets its name from a man named Johnston who was a geologist stationed there to watch the volcano. Apparently, an earthquake in March of 1980 was what probably awakened the volcano and they started to see lots of earthquakes and activity so they were watching the volcano for two months before it blew. The lava dome that is currently building is in the middle of the crater. You can see where the lateral blast eruption blew out the side of the mountain.

You can hike past the Observatory on the ridge for 2 miles, but we only made it about half a mile out, there were huge snow drifts to climb over, yet it felt like 90 degrees outside. It was a barren landscape, no trees. You can see in the valley behind me the huge craters made by the landslide caused by the side of the mountain blowing out and the lava flows that came later. The large peaks of rock that stayed in the valley from the mountain are called hummocks.

This picture shows a lot of what looks like steam coming off the crater. It is probably landslides, according to the films and information we read in the two observatories we visited. The unstable landscape causes almost constant landslides in the summer. But the forest ranger we listened to said there is ash and rock still being put out every day, one large truck worth.

The eruption caused three huge events to occur, a huge landslide where the mountain blew out. This landslide they believed traveled at 150 mph. It was diverted by Johnstons Ridge, where we were, and continued down the Toutle River Valley where we saw the elk. The blast cloud followed next of gas, rock and heat and traveled 300 mph. This killed all wildlife and vegetation for about 20 miles in the blast zone. Then, the intense heat of the blast caused water to boil underground near the crater and caused huge geysers to erupt where there are now craters in the ground. Then the intense heat caused the snow and glaciers to melt on that mountain and surrounding mountains causing massive flooding. The dead trees filled Spirit Lake completely and I believe, Coldwater Lake was filled by the massive landslide. Then about 24-48 hours after the eruption, the ash started to fall. The ash even reached Portland we are told.

So that was our trip to Mt. Saint Helens. One beautiful, but exhausting day.