Mt St. Helens +40 Years

[Oregonhunter5]

Why?

All them logs in the water under the surface. Reminds me of the lockness monster.

 

[RicInOR]

Stumbled on this today - from May of this year

Satellite pictures at this link:

Mount St. Helens Is Going Green Again

Forty years of satellite imagery chronicles a remarkable floral comeback.

www.atlasobscura.com

World of Change: Devastation and Recovery at Mt. St. Helens, All Images - NASA Science

earthobservatory.nasa.gov

1979




2015

 

[hongkong2]

At the time I was living Toutle on 160 acres that ran down to Silver lake with a great view of the mountain. in the winter we'd drive up the mountain to the snowmobile parking lot and hike as far up the mountain as we could, put on our cross country skis and head down until we hit the B trail. This was the 3.5 mile trail down the mountain that the snow mobiles would take, it all really steep washboard from the machines. you had to stay in a low crouch and it didn't take very long before your thighs were on fire. If you came up out of the crouch more than a couple of inches you loose control and crash and burn. About half way down you'd have to stop and cross Spirit Lake Highway then put you skis back on and continue the rest of the way down. We'd rest for a while then hitch hike back up to the lot and do it all over again, rinse and repeat till you dropped. After it started smoking we'd go up to the top of Signal Ridge and have volcano parties getting drunk and screaming at the mountain to blow, if it had I wouldn't be posting this today. I was down in CA visiting a friend when the news came that the mountain had blown so I immediately packed up and started back home. I heard the reports about all the ash so I stopped and bought a whole bunch of vacuum cleaner bags and started putting them over my air filter just north of PDX. After hitting Woodland I was changing bags pretty frequently as the ash was pretty thick. Got stopped and ID checked at the Castle Rock turnoff to Spirit Lake Highway and was allowed to proceed. I finally got back to the house and got out of the car and the first thing I noticed was how eerily quiet it was, nothing was stirring, no birds, no animals, nothing but silence. The house, barn and out buildings were intact except for all the ash. The Toutle River was right behind the house separated by a ridge about 300 feet high and I started up to see how bad things were. When I got to the top there was nothing but mud flow as far as I could see and only a bit of chimney poking through from a house that was there. If it wasn't for the ridge my place would have been under 20 feet of mud... I drove up to the railroad bridge and all the was left was some of the rails all twisted up pointing to the sky, the devastation was shocking to say the least. I lent Harry Truman my spare tool box so he could work on his boat and now they're both buried up there, so it goes.

 

[RicInOR]

first thing I noticed was how eerily quiet it was, nothing was stirring, no birds, no animals, nothing but silence.

When I visited the area I experienced this too, I had forgotten.

 

[RicInOR]

21st Anniversary

1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Ura-Ki]

Happy mount St. Helens Blow day!

 

[Ruger Rich]

I lived in inner SE Portland at that time, and not a bad place then. I drove up on Mt Tabor and just sat and watched.
At that time I was in charge of a data center, Quotron Systems, that supplied real time stock market quotes and
statistics to most of the brokerage community in the North West. The equipment providing this was cooled
by air conditioning drawing air from outside. First to go was the A/C, they just plugged up and crapped out. Then
the servers began to fail as a pile of the ash had made it through the A/C units prior to their death. When I went in
the center was hot, very hot. I put in the next four days 18 hours per day and finally got the place limping along
in simplex mode. So that escapade was my strongest memory of the event.

 

[Knebel]

I was just there this weekend!

 

[Cape_hunter]

One of the scariest days of life.
I was 9 and at my grandmother's house in fairview. You could see st Helen's from her back yard.
My father was up at "St Helen's" climbing....
He was about 15 miles east of the mountain rock climbing with a Vietnam vet buddy when it went. As a young child in the days before cell phones, watching it erupt from the back yard....I thought dad was gone. The longest 8-10 hours of my life. They eventually made it to white salmon and were able to call.
A day I'll never forget.

 

[v0lcom13sn0w]

One of the scariest days of life.
I was 9 and at my grandmother's house in fairview. You could see st Helen's from her back yard.
My father was up at "St Helen's" climbing....
He was about 15 miles east of the mountain rock climbing with a Vietnam vet buddy when it went. As a young child in the days before cell phones, watching it erupt from the back yard....I thought dad was gone. The longest 8-10 hours of my life. They eventually made it to white salmon and were able to call.
A day I'll never forget.

 

[sobo]

One of the scariest days of life.
I was 9 and at my grandmother's house in fairview. You could see st Helen's from her back yard.
My father was up at "St Helen's" climbing....
He was about 15 miles east of the mountain rock climbing with a Vietnam vet buddy when it went. As a young child in the days before cell phones, watching it erupt from the back yard....I thought dad was gone. The longest 8-10 hours of my life. They eventually made it to white salmon and were able to call.
A day I'll never forget.

Glad your dad and his partner made it out. As a climber myself, I'd like to know the name and (exact) location of the climbing area if you can recall it.

 

[Cape_hunter]

I can prob figure it out. I've

Glad your dad and his partner made it out. As a climber myself, I'd like to know the name and (exact) location of the climbing area if you can recall it.

Well it's been 40 years so not sure I'm much good in remembering the exact crag they were on. Lol

 

[Norwestr55]

I was at my brothers house in Westport WA after overly imbibing in a number of umm, things the night before. I remember waking up and it was still pretty dark out so I went back to sleep. Turned out that it was actually 9:30 am or so.
Favorite pics taken by a climber on Mt Adams.

 

[sobo]

Now, THOSE are really cool shots!

 

[ilikegunspdx]

I remember black cloud coming and ash falling like snow, shoveling ash, wearing dust masks on the way to school, and big dust clouds every time a car drove buy. Also Harry Truman and the Komo news guy film (Pic from internet, not mine).