The Great Northwest: Mt. St. Helens

 

Mt. St. Helens was a sobering, amazing experience.  It is beautiful now, but in 1980 its volcanic dust traveled around the world.  The long dormant volcano had developed a bulge on the north flank—pent-up gases and magma pushed the side of the mountain out 500 feet.  David A. Johnston, a young volcano researcher was camped five miles away monitoring it.  TAn earthquake caused the bulge to slip down in the largest landslide ever, anywhere, releasing the pressure on the mountain.  The landslide buried 14 miles of the Toutle River valley by up to 450 feet in minutes, covering lakes, streams and river, until they found new routes and reformed differently.  Johnston radioed headquarters yelling, “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it.”  His body was never found. 

 

Scientists and the rest of us expect volcanoes to erupt upward.  Mt. St. Helens blew laterally, shooting magma, ash, gas, and melted glacier mud sideways where the landslide opened it to the north.  Huge trees 15 miles away were blown over like toothpicks.  Too full of mineral and ash to be salvageable as lumber, they remain,  still looking like toothpicks from Johnston Ridge Observatory, named for the scientist who was one of 57 to lose their lives that day.

 

  The lateral blast toppled and scorched 230 square miles of forest in three minutes.  The ash plume rose 15 miles in the air, raining ash on four states.  The National Monument was created to preserve the area with no human intervention in order to study the volcano and its aftermath.

There is a plume of steam rising from the center of the crater.