cleared by mid-day. There are a series of four welcome center/museums that start about 40 miles from the actual volcano. We started the day at the visitor's center farthest from the volcano. Each progressive center is significantly closer to the volcano so you get to see the scenery change as you get more and more information on the volcano and what it did to the ecology and community when it erupted in 1980. One of the most amazing things was seeing how the ecology has adapted and recovered when you were further out, but how little it has recovered .JPG)
when you get within 5-10 miles on the volcano cone.When Mt. St. Helens erupted it started as the largest landslide that man has ever witnessed. This allowed the magma to vent, massively, out the side of the volcano. There was a 5-mile evacuated zone radius for safety, but the observer on that side of the mountain only had time to radio, "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!" One of the rangers explained that he was killed almost instantly (at 5 miles away!!!) by a 300 mph wall of rock and timber-filled wind. Another observer, more to the side and 1/2 mile further away, actually got out two tranmissions, the last of which was, "I'm going to make a run for it, but I don't think I'm going to make it!"
The closest you can get to the actual volcano is the spot where that closest observer was set up. It was really eerie because there's very little recovery inside that.JPG)
5-mile ring. There are still thousands of grey trees (whole forests) lying where they were blown down on the hillsides and mountaintops that were scoured by the blast. There was also a lot of information on people who were nearby, but survived, and many who didn't. We all remember how much ash Mt. St. Helens blew into the air and all the problems it caused, but we hadn't known much about the ash and mud flow that ran down to Toutle Valley. That's what killed the majority of the people who died. It filled the entire river valley below the volcano to depths of 150 feet and so much ran down nearby rivers that they had to close the Columbia River to shipping after the river channels went shallow and stranded over a dozen ocean-going ships. Most of that ash in the Toutle Valley is still there and although the river flows through one of two gigantic new lakes, the rest has carved a 30-50 foot deep canyon in that soft ash. It's alsmost a miniature Grand Canyon, but created in just 30 years. They actually had to build a dam further down the river just to trap the ash run-off so it wouldn't clog up rivers downstream.
.JPG)
5-mile ring. There are still thousands of grey trees (whole forests) lying where they were blown down on the hillsides and mountaintops that were scoured by the blast. There was also a lot of information on people who were nearby, but survived, and many who didn't. We all remember how much ash Mt. St. Helens blew into the air and all the problems it caused, but we hadn't known much about the ash and mud flow that ran down to Toutle Valley. That's what killed the majority of the people who died. It filled the entire river valley below the volcano to depths of 150 feet and so much ran down nearby rivers that they had to close the Columbia River to shipping after the river channels went shallow and stranded over a dozen ocean-going ships. Most of that ash in the Toutle Valley is still there and although the river flows through one of two gigantic new lakes, the rest has carved a 30-50 foot deep canyon in that soft ash. It's alsmost a miniature Grand Canyon, but created in just 30 years. They actually had to build a dam further down the river just to trap the ash run-off so it wouldn't clog up rivers downstream.We were all very impressed by the destructive power of the volcano.
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