Mount St. Helens
The last day in Washington was spent down at Mount St. Helens. It was about a 2 hour drive from the Seattle area. this place is simply spectacular. We’ve all seen the pictures and videos of the eruption and devastation it caused but none of that does it any justice at all. It’s very hard to get a sense of scale here. It looks pretty close, but when you look down into the valley in front of you everything is really, really small. This mountain is huge. A helicopter few ion front of the caldera and it was a speck. We thought it was inside the crater but it wasn’t. there’s a picture of it.
We had a real eye opener when we were leaving. We ate at a little place @15-20 miles from the observatory. It was above the Toutle River which is where the worst of the mudslides went. The gray ash deposits are really wide here. Probably 1/2 mile or so with the river running through the center of it. The ash here is @ 150 feet deep. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY feet! That’s the new riverbed. it just filled in the valley. And it goes on and on for miles and miles. Bridges were damaged over 50 miles downstream.
1300 feet of the top of the mountain disappeared in seconds, first from the biggest landslide ever recorded in human history to the initial blast when it did erupt seconds later.
Ok, enough rambling. Click the pic! Enjoy! I did.
Mount St. Helens Panorama from Johnston Ridge Observatory
Click the Panorama for the full size version. It’s BIG!
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