We awoke today at the town of Rainier and soon after breakfast boarded busses for an excursion to Mt. Saint Helens. We passed through Longview, obviously a town dependent on the processing and export of timber, joined Interstate 5, and then headed east into the Cascade Range.
Stopping at our first Forest Service visitor center, we all went into the theatre to see a thrill-a-minute movie about the St. Helens eruption. Then, the curtains lifted… to reveal… a grand vista of… nothing! The view was a wall of fog, white as the underside of an avalanche. We proceeded on, now rather concerned about what we might find at higher elevation.
Entering the blast zone, we were impressed to witness the awesome destructive force of the volcano. The soil was grey and gravelly miles from the volcano’s crater even after twenty five years, and logs lay scattered over the hillsides where they had been flattened by the eruption’s blast. Looking down into the Toutle River valley, we saw plains of ash, the result of the debris flow that eventually clogged the Columbia. We also saw fields of pumice, ejected in pyroclastic flows. These were pock-marked with craters formed by great buried chunks of glacial ice, baked by the volcano’s heat into explosions of steam. Yet the story of Mt. Saint Helens is as much about the triumph of life in adversity as about nature’s destructive force. Plants with fluffy seeds such as fireweed now grew among the fallen logs. Grasses, perhaps carried in the toes or tummies of elk, were common. We found purple flowers of alpine lupine and Cardwell’s penstemon blooming even at this late date. And perhaps best of all, we found a herd of elk feeding and resting in a valley not far from the road. Yet we were disappointed with the view. From the highest overlook we could see little of the mountain. After a while we gave up and descended to a lower visitor center. Here our hotel crew had prepared a picnic lunch. As we ate, the clouds lifted. The volcano’s white flanks emerged. Topography began to emerge through the clouds. And at last the crater appeared. Considering these new developments, we jumped back onto our busses and rode up to try the view from the upper vista. Snow fell on the way, but our luck held, and we got a great look at the summit. As if this were not enough, stopping on the way down to pick up the crew, we were blessed with a beautiful double rainbow.
Whatever might Lewis and Clark have thought had they beheld the remains of Saint Helen’s eruption? No doubt they would have left us many cogent observations and cureous misspellings. And while Lewis and Clark proceeded on long ago, it’s fun to think that exploration continues in the Northwest at places like Mount Saint Helens.
Stopping at our first Forest Service visitor center, we all went into the theatre to see a thrill-a-minute movie about the St. Helens eruption. Then, the curtains lifted… to reveal… a grand vista of… nothing! The view was a wall of fog, white as the underside of an avalanche. We proceeded on, now rather concerned about what we might find at higher elevation.
Entering the blast zone, we were impressed to witness the awesome destructive force of the volcano. The soil was grey and gravelly miles from the volcano’s crater even after twenty five years, and logs lay scattered over the hillsides where they had been flattened by the eruption’s blast. Looking down into the Toutle River valley, we saw plains of ash, the result of the debris flow that eventually clogged the Columbia. We also saw fields of pumice, ejected in pyroclastic flows. These were pock-marked with craters formed by great buried chunks of glacial ice, baked by the volcano’s heat into explosions of steam. Yet the story of Mt. Saint Helens is as much about the triumph of life in adversity as about nature’s destructive force. Plants with fluffy seeds such as fireweed now grew among the fallen logs. Grasses, perhaps carried in the toes or tummies of elk, were common. We found purple flowers of alpine lupine and Cardwell’s penstemon blooming even at this late date. And perhaps best of all, we found a herd of elk feeding and resting in a valley not far from the road. Yet we were disappointed with the view. From the highest overlook we could see little of the mountain. After a while we gave up and descended to a lower visitor center. Here our hotel crew had prepared a picnic lunch. As we ate, the clouds lifted. The volcano’s white flanks emerged. Topography began to emerge through the clouds. And at last the crater appeared. Considering these new developments, we jumped back onto our busses and rode up to try the view from the upper vista. Snow fell on the way, but our luck held, and we got a great look at the summit. As if this were not enough, stopping on the way down to pick up the crew, we were blessed with a beautiful double rainbow.
Whatever might Lewis and Clark have thought had they beheld the remains of Saint Helen’s eruption? No doubt they would have left us many cogent observations and cureous misspellings. And while Lewis and Clark proceeded on long ago, it’s fun to think that exploration continues in the Northwest at places like Mount Saint Helens.
