Many loggers and others lost their lives when it blew the top off the mountain. Hard to believe it has been 40 years ago today that Mt. St. Helens erupted. Don't forget those who lost their lives 40 years ago, and were never found! The only bright spot is that it happened on Sunday when many were not working, or the loss of life would of been staggering!
I seem to recall the number lost as being 57. I also seem to recall that most were campers that were told to stay out of the area by the volcano experts. A few were volcano experts that were camps on ridges across the river valley. I remember the state closing the area down weeks before and as time went on and visible things didn't happen, people started getting the "attitude" that experts were raising alarms for other reasons. A lot of stuff up there is getting grown over now and you don't get the full affect of how big the blast was. It is still a great experience to go see it if you ever get the chance.
I have probably said this before . I was in Tacoma the week before this all happened was lots of talk about whether or not the mt. would go some were even betting , I left on Friday evening headed east. think I was in Colorado when I heard the news
Yep some people just don't want to believe the scientists, if they say something and it does not happen on the exact time or day they think they are just making things up. Could draw some parallels to things these days!
I watched it firsthand as I was living in Morton when it blew. My dad lost two sides up there when that happened it was a hell of a mess for quite a few years afterwards. I still stand by the notion that if that mountain hadn't blown we would have still been logging old growth until probably 2000. That is what really kicked off the in my environmental push for the Northwest as we were just kind of a forgotten region until that brought the world's eyes on us.
Funny, I didn't read the date of the first post of this thread, sent my father a message about saint helens anniversary, he responded back that it was on the 18th, which is when the post was made. He was on Mt Olympus when Helens erupted, I was In a stroller in Port Angeles. Old Man memory check complete, he is fine, aparently he pays attention.
I was living in Ellensburg at the time, I think I posted this before but it really looked just like a black curtain/wall of ash heading eastward. Then it went dark in no time.
The wife and I took a drive up Weyerhaeuser public highway as far as we could go yesterday to look at nature's progress of taking back what belong to her. I took a few photos to show that progress and I see there is plenty of commercial use of the assets in that area. The first photos show the Toutle River making new channels on the mud flow. Note the clear cuts on the surrounding hills.
Here are a few shots of the mountain itself with a coat of snow. I guess there are also a couple of working glaciers now. The last photo here shows the blast zone and the land slide. We got down to Goldwater lake but the vegetation has grown so much that you can't get a good photo of the surrounding area. There were also a couple of hundred or more people there trying to use the rest room so we didn't bother to stop.
Finally, here are a couple of photos of the commercial use of the noble fir trees that were planted in the area after the eruption. That part of the area was sold a few years back to a private individual. If you look close at the trees you will see the top halves have been cut off and removed. The limbs are cutoff and used for making Christmas bows and then shipped all over the world. The company uses a feller buncher to cut them off and a forwarder to carry them to a landing area where they are loaded onto flatbed trucks and hauled away. The rest of the trees are left to grow more till they are cut later for more bows. The cut makes the limbs grow like crazy. The last photo shows whee the trees are cut in rows. I don't for sure know why but suspect it might be for natural reseeding.
Kurt Erickson owns that. They are cut into rows for 360* sun to help the boughs grow bigger.
where did 40 yrs go.
It's been almost 25 year since I drove through part of that. Sure has changed a lot. Thanks for sharing the pictures!
Today
I was working 850 miles away at Antelope Valley near Buelah, ND when it blew. 2 days later we had a very hazy sky, partially obscuring the sun. That ash travelled a long way.
I like that angle a lot better than the one I was at.
I was born on that day in a little mining town in Arizona. I always tell people that God used that volcano to destroy the mold he made me with. It has always been on my bucket list to see it.
And another great sight in the same area along HW-12 is the flower and bulb gardens at Mossyrock.
Not so much logging related. To day the wife had a Doctors appt, in Longview. As we came down Rainier hill I could look out and see the dredge Oregon working off the tip of Cottenwood island. Right in the mouth of the Cowlitz. It was a real memory moment for me as 40 years ago this week I went to work on a dredge in the same spot. I spent 8 1/2 months working right there. Most of it in the sump at the mouth of the Cowlitz. Then in June 1983 I was back there again. During one of the follow up eruptions they sent the up river dredge crews home and even pulled some dredges out of the water. We kept working. It was erie watching the plume go up knowing others were going home and there we sat right in the mouth of the Cowlitz. At Christmas they were going to give us 4 days off after working 7 days a week since June. They ended up calling us back after 3 days. When we left we had 35 feet of water in the sump. After 3 days it was 17 feet and we drew 11 feet. We needed to get back to work before we grounded. There was still that much material moving 6 months later.
DeGoade's bulb farm.