Mt St Helens

We have just recently come back from 4 days at Mt St Helen's (or more precisely, a state park just near by). It was quite awesome to see the volcano up close, and to see the devastation that is still evident 27 years after it's eruption.

This first picture is one of the first glimpses we got of the volcano. Mt St Helens is the hazy mountain with the flat top in the background.

We stopped at a lookout part way along the road, and took these photos with Mt St Helens in the background.

This is the closest we were able to go to the volcano. I took this picture at the Johnston Ridge Observatory, which is the last visitor center you can get to. The entire front (north) of the mountain is completely wiped out, due to the blast going out to the side instead of straight up.

If you'd like to read about the history of Mt St Helens and the 1980 eruption, you can see read about it at ... http://www.mt-st-helens.com/history.html

What amazed me is that you could see evidence still of the blast. They grouped the blast zone into 3 different zones. The first zone was about 6 miles around the volcano and it was called the Tree Removal Zone. As guessed by the name, the trees in this zone were totally destroyed. These next photos are from this zone, and as you can see there are still tree stumps left and the vegetation is slowly returning.

The next zone was the tree down zone, which was from about 6-18 miles. In this zone, the force of the blast knocked huge trees down as though they were blades of grass. Lastly was the standing dead zone which was from about 18-24 miles. In this last zone, the heat of the blast killed the vegetation but the tree trunks stayed upright.

Ben was most facinated by the "silent" zone. The people in the immediate vicinity of the blast did not hear a thing when the volcano erupted. However, people a few hours away reported hearing sounds that resembled thunder or sonic booms.

All in all, I loved this camping trip. I've been wanting to see Mt St Helens since we moved here and it certainly met my expectations. The scenery was definately different from what I've ever seen before.

I'll leave you with this last photo of the Toutle River. The river is actually very small, but the devastation around it makes it look huge from the distance. (I'm guessing that the mud flow followed the river path)