Back to the Green

The plain below the mountain enlarged the lake

Yet another road trip. That’s right we had an open day in our schedule, heaven forbid, and Sandy woke up with the thought that we should get out and about. The item on the short list was to head out to Mount St. Helen. You will recall that thirty years ago it blew up in a spectacular explosion captured for all time on film. This was a place of old growth forest in the Cascade range of mountains that had been developing a curious bulge on the side of the mountain. That bulge eventually grew to a sizable 450 foot bump before all of it first collapsed and then went skyward. As the Ranger said, “Think fifteen… in 15 seconds it collapsed, then in 15 minutes covered 15 miles with its debris, and 15 hours sent a plume 15 miles high eventually going around the globe.”

Good thing it was cool and comfortable

We started north from Vancouver, Washington at about eleven in the morning. Yes, we were slow getting organized. Blundering off of I-5 at exit 21 (Woodland) we meandered along SR-503 gaining altitude slowly at first then more radically further along. It was one of those green drives where the trees grow together overhead. It gets darker and darker and you start to think that you may not see the sun for awhile. That was not the case this day however.

A great deal of change has occurred

We broke into the sunlight at elevation (about 3500’ or so) and the landscape changed radically. The felled trees of a past forest pointedly giving a clear indication of the direction of the blast showed us much of what we find out from the Rangers talk. The enlarged Spirit Lake with its floating debris showed us secrets of pyroclastic flow and the lake’s water that dragged full trees from 800’ above its new level into its new dimensions as it splashed up and then returned to the lake. The sight of the station that was a mere five miles from the source of the bulge brought a shudder to my spine as I thought of the people trying to monitor the mountain in its final seconds before it blew everything away!! The sight of the new plain below the viewpoint where most of the collapsed bulge ended up and created the new blockage for Spirit Lake is a stark reminder of the destruction of the original forest that was there. Now, just 30 years later the floor of that ash-pumice plain is 80% covered with vegetation… but here we are talking just weeds and low brush at most.


The “weeds” are really wildflowers and that too was part of the day. The lupine fix nitrogen so it helped bring life back to the barren remains of the eruption within a year. The snow covered backside of the hills facing away from the blast also held the seeds of future growth for the area. The immense size of the destruction and loss of life was something to contemplate as we wandered around the viewpoint. We did not climb the hill to the north of the viewpoint because we were running out of time if we wanted to get back to Vancouver before dark. We had not had much for lunch, a bag of chips qualifies as lunch in this case, and getting dinner together was on the list. A sub-note to this trip was that if I had a scooter or a sports car of some sort I would love to take parts of this drive again for the curvy roads (lots of those 15 mph turns) and start earlier in the day!!