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Published: September 27th 2017
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blog 09-26-17 Mt St Helen
The rain ended during the night and the stars came out, perfect timing. Today we are heading for Mt St Helen and it is looking like a splendid day to view the mountain. I had been here 2 yrs ago and there was so much smoke from forest fires that I couldn't see the mountain at all. Today we could see it from 50 miles away and as we got closer it got bigger. To make it super outstanding, there was a layer of snow from about 6,000 ft so with the blue sky behind, the mountain stood out perfectly.
It took over an hour to get to the visitor's center at Johnston Ridge about 50 miles from the I-5 exit. The road curved around mountains covered in trees, some planted in 1983 others planted later but the area has recovered because of the result of thousands of hours planting trees one at a time. They plant trees about a ft tall and had to dig down through the ash to get to the soil as the ash has no nutrition.
In 1980 after the eruption the area was completely devistated. All the
trees were blown down by the explosion then buried in ash. The ash plume was 15 MILES high and hit states as far as Idaho and Montana. It was dark for months. The rivers were blocked with debris and stopped running.
Slowly the land is recovering with plants, animals, birds and insects all returning to a remote landscape turning green again. There are still some places that are bare that hopefully will recover in time.
We saw mountain sheep and elk through a spotter scope at 2 of the obseratories and heard coyotes singing. What a thrill that was. As we were leaving the parking lot at the visitor center there were 5 sage-grouse coming out of the grasses. The area is returning to a normal wooded forest.
When we got back the boys were very happy to see us and we took them for a nice walk aroung the campground then to the dog park. There was a little running around but not as much as yesterday so we headed back for happy hour and their dinner. We sat out for quite a while tonight because it was so beautiful. We are sitting on top of
a hill with huge trees all around and we can see the sun only by looking at the tops of the trees. The temps are mild and we enjoyed the evening as the sun set.
Tomorrow we leave Washington and stay in Oregon for a few days then on to California for a more extended stay in that state. Sure hope the weather holds for a few more days.
Ginnie's impression of the mountain was what a huge hole the explosion left, blowing out half the side of the mountain. It is the smallest of the 4 bigger mts in the area and the one that is most active, still having seismic activities. There was a film we watched about the eruption and some of the pictures were so real looking we asked about how the film was made. We were told some 35mm still pictures existed of the actual eruption so they took those pictures and computer generated a film. It was really well done. After the movie was over the screen was pulled up and the curtains behind were opened revealing the mountain. Really dramatic.
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