Mount Saint Helens Explodes

The first time I saw Mount Saint Helens was in 1968. It was a beautiful peak with Fuji-like symmetry. This moutain was the most famous landmark of Cowlitz County, Washington. We made quite a few visits up to the mountain just to see the snow. In 1972, with Frank and my dad, we made a semi-serious attempt to climb the mountain. We didn't start early enough and weren't really prepared for the rigors of mountain climbing. I wrote a story about that climb. Here are some pictures (Password protected) of that climb and latter climbs of Mount Saint Helens. I was quite interested when the mountain began to smoke and rattle in 1979. When I attended Nancy's wedding in 1980, my plane ride was diverted because of the ash of a vocanic eruption.

When it finally exploded, my family was all excited. They have a lot of hair-raising stories. A flooding of the Toutle River almost washed away Eileen's house. And of course there was a nice coating of ash on everything. Luckily the thrust of the eruption was east and not much damage to people was done in Longview. In the past ten years, I've climbed to the crater rim twice, once with Frank's family and once with my family and some of Kim's relatives.

Mount Saint Helens is an active volcano, in southwestern Washington, in the Cascade Range. The volcano, which had been dormant since 1857, began to show signs of renewed activity in early 1980 when a column of magma began pushing up inside the mountain, causing the north face of the mountain to bulge out. On May 18, 1980, an earthquake caused a landslide on the mountain's north face, taking off the top of the mountain. The landslide triggered the main eruption by uncorking the column of magma that had been building up. The eruption spewed a cloud of ash and gases as high as 19 km (12 mi). The blast killed 57 people and damaged life in an area of some 180 sq km (some 70 sq mi), and a vast area was covered with ash and debris. As a result of the eruption, the mountain's elevation was decreased from 2,950 m (9,677 ft) to 2,550 m (8,365 ft). A minor eruption occurred in 1982, and the last magma-producing eruption was in 1986. The Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument was established there in 1983.