Mt. St. Helen's

Thirty five years ago Mt. St. Helen's erupted. Fifty seven people were killed, 22 bridges destroyed, 20 homes gone and the complexion of the mountain and the surrounding countryside changed forever. Lakes were formed by the damming of local rivers, miles of a thick pine forest were gone in seconds,  and a 12 mile cloud of ash looked like snow as it settled on Vancouver, Washington. The eruption started as rumblings and then the largest landslide in recorded history came down the north side of the mountain and into the west side of the valley. The dirty and rock moved down the face of the mountain at 150 miles per hour. A few seconds later, the lava cone exploded sending ash and pumice from inside the mountain at speeds of 300 miles per hour, overtaking the landslide, burying trees, animal life, rivers and everything in it's way...sometimes 150 feet deep.

Since then private lands have been reforested, but public lands were left to evolve on their own. Thirty five years later, one sees occasional pine trees, a smattering of alder trees, small shrubs and small animal life including rodents, chipmunks and squirrels. Knowing the history of this event, you can see that much of the land is still a wasteland. You don't see lava flows since that was not the nature of this volcano, however you can see lava flows from a previous eruption 7,000 years ago at Mt. St. Helen's.

Unfortunately, on the day we were at the national monument, it was covered by smoke from wild fires in Central and Eastern Washington. The visibility was so poor that we were only able to see an outline of the mountain from 5 miles away. Nature was still changing the face of the landscape.

Old lava river

regrowth on public lands

Mt. St. Helen's from 5 miles away

photos of before and after