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Published: September 6th 2008
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Mount St Helens
The RV park on the hill, about an hour from the observatory. You got a 10 minute hot shower for 50 cents! What a deal. Cody here. So we made it to Labor Day weekend and had no plans for accommodations. We didn't really think about it too much, to be completely honest. Based on what we had heard last night from the park ranger, we were pretty sure that we were going to be sleeping in the car in a parking lot somewhere, but we decided to give it a go. We drove a short way up towards Mount St Helens, where there is a state park campground; it was full. Luckily, two miles back on our way in we had seen an RV park, and we went to go see if they had any openings, not expecting much, as there seemed to be a large number of RVs parked there. I went inside and asked if they had anything available for tent camping…THEY DID!!! We lucked out, big time, because we could stay as long as we wanted. We opted for two nights only. As it turns out, we got to talking with the lady running the place, and her husband was from Pennsylvania, he recognized Nickey's "Lehigh" sweatshirt. So they talked for a little while about Penn staples, fun things to do, and
Mount St Helens
"Oh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay. I sleep all night and I work all day." The Mt. St. Helens lumberjack. Cody is soooo proud of his new hatchet and Pendleton shirt(what a goof). Behind him is our campsite at the Mt. St. Helens RV Park. such. We got the tent set up, and I got to use my brand new hatchet for the very first time to pound in stakes.
The next morning, we got up nice and early and drove into town, so that we could get some breakfast and get a blog sent out and get back to MSH before it got too late. All I'll say is that things didn't go so well, and we ended up getting neither breakfast nor a blog and we got up to MSH about 12:30. At this point, we were pretty sure that it was going to be another miserable day, because it had dawned cold and gray, and when we got up to the closest point to the mountain it was windy and about 44 degrees. Needless to say that with the fog and the clouds we didn't get to see very much of the volcano. There was a neat talk about the volcano and its activity just as we walked up, so we listened to that, and then we went inside where it was warm. We did learn some interesting information: the volcano had been still erupting lava since the major blast in
Mount St Helens
On the drive to the observatory. Those clouds do not look too encouraging. 1980. Obviously, none of these had been big explosions like the big one, but the volcano was still spewing lava, all of it piling up in the center making what they called a "whaleback" because it looks like the back of a whale. Because of the continual ejection of more lava and because this lava took up a bunch of space in the center of the caldera, the world's newest glacier (formed in the crater after the 1980 eruption) was cut in half and is being forced down the mountain at the rate of about two feet a day!
About the big explosion, I'm sure most of you reading this were alive and you might even remember the eruption in 1980. It was so big that it sent ash 12+ miles into the atmosphere, and the ash encircled the globe two weeks after the eruption. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Scientists in the area knew in February 1980 that something was happening under the mountain. There had begun to be a sharp increase in earthquakes in the area, and they found that they were all centered somewhere below Mount St Helens. It was also around this time that
Mount St Helens
At only 6 miles from the volcano, the observatory woud have been wiped out like that in the 1980 eruption. And since they're run by the Forest Service, they don't have the real passport stamp. :( the first crater and plume of smoke was noticed in the top of the volcano by a passing army plane taking pictures of the area. By March and April there were somewhere around 2000 earthquakes a day, most of them small enough that they weren't noticeable by people living in the area. About this time there was a rather large crater in the top of the mountain and the smoke was coming in more volume. They also began to notice that the north slope of the mountain was beginning to bulge outward. In mid to late April scientists gave notice and the entire area within an 11 mile radius was mandatorily evacuated. By the end of April, the earthquakes had increased in magnitude and the north slope had bulged 255 feet up and 1500 feet out. Scientists knew that something big was going to happen, but they didn't know when. Meanwhile, residents were upset and clamoring for the authorities to let them back into their houses, because they didn't have food or clothing; everything was in their houses. In the second week of May, the mountain quieted, and while scientists didn't think that things were over, they didn't have any
Mount St Helens
Impressive isn't it :). Behind the fog is Mt. St. Helens, with what would be a view of the crater, that up until 2008, when it went dormant, was still oozing lava (they said it was around a pickup truck worth of lava every 15 seconds). idea of where things stood. On May 17, authorities decided to let a limited number of people back into the area during the day to gather belongings and take care of things at their houses. 37 people were allowed into the area in the first caravan. On May 18, another caravan was to be allowed in. At 8:30 in the morning, on May 18, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook the north slope of the mountain, causing a massive landslide which rushed down at 180 mph; the entire north side of the mountain fell away. A few seconds later, a gigantic explosion erupted out laterally from the mountain at 300 mph, quickly overtaking the landslide, and blasting down trees and scorching everything in its path with the 250 degree wind. The landscape was completely changed. Earth and ash and lava covered the land for miles around. Trees as far as 17 miles away from the volcano were found flattened by the massive explosion. The pictures were simply astounding. Lakes were no longer there, new lakes were formed, and the stream running through was simply gone, covered by the earth, lava, and ash. It took them years to get all of the
Mount St Helens
This is the model of the 1980 eruption. The "awesome computerized LED lighting" represented different stages of the eruption. The orange is ash, the blue is landslide, and red is mudslide. On the right of the screen is the Johnson Ridge Observatory, where we are right now. ash and mud cleaned up. Finally, things are beginning to grow back in the area, 28 years later. You can still see the paths of the volcano ejecta, but life is definitely coming back.
After staying another night, from Mount St Helens we drove down to Portland on Sunday morning (08/31), for some crazy weird "voodoo" donuts. Chew on that until next time...
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