It was 24 years after the major eruption of 1980, and the mountain had been restless. My son Charles who was 19 now and I decided to drive down from Olympia WA and sit vigil for a while just in case something dramatic was about to happen. I took notes.
6PM Oct 3, 2004 —We’ve been gazing at the mountain, from one angle or another, since late afternoon. I’m sitting now on a wide, weathered stump, where I plan to stay a while. There is no better view than this, outside the danger zone, which has been officially extended to Johnston Ridge Observatory, 5.5 miles from the caldera, into which it faces directly.
The observatory is named in honor of the scientist Dave Johnston who was viewing from that location in a substantially less substantial observatory on the morning of May 18, 1980. He had time to radio to his colleagues stationed in Vancouver, WA, “Vancouver! This is it!” No one realized or imagined, apparently, even though the mountain had been visibly bulging out on that northern slope for months, that the volcano would blow sideways rather than straight up.
[edit 2025: In fact, I’ve found out that they saw the growing bulge on the north slope and did imagine it, but didn’t believe it would happen because it had never been seen to happen before. So Dave Johnston was where he was when it did.]
I know with my head that right below us, beneath our very seats, profound forces pulse and strive, but to look at this mountain that seems so still, so calm as it fades into the dusk, it is hard for my guts to believe it: I don’t feel in any danger.
If it were not for the scientists with all their gear telling us of the deep dynamics, the only outward sign of activity would be the plumes of dust we see rising from occasional rockfalls within the crater. Those little avalanches are more frequent as the imperceptible quakes and tremors shake the mountain, but from here, nine miles away, no sound of it reaches us.
Our house is 60-70 miles away, as the pyroclastic projectile flies. Due to the distance and the prevailing winds, we rarely saw ashfall in the events of 1980, and actually had to drive down under the great ash cloud on May 18th to scoop up a souvenir supply; we still have it in the same Folger’s Crystals jar. It was a light, floury-textured ash that day, unlike the very gritty stuff that came later. The place we collected it was about 15-20 miles from the mountain, and considerable nearer the outer edges of the blast zone, with another ridge of hills in the way. We never saw any evidence of great heat or devastation that day.
We didn’t go there just to get a jar of ash. The thing is, when there’s a volcano going off in my backyard, it is unthinkable to just sit and watch it on TV.
Everywhere around us here are millions of dollars worth of record-keeping equipment, in the hands of both amateurs and professionals. We can see a cluster of news trucks at one viewpoint: they and all the sightseers were evacuated Saturday from one much nearer the Johnston Ridge Observatory, where we saw them on Thursday.
The big white vans remind me of barnacles, clinging to the rock with their feathery antennae out, grabbing at whatever they can get from the airwaves. Our spot is about a mile farther east, and at this proximity to the action we’re all waiting for, that gives us a slightly better view into the caldera: we can see a bit more of the mound in the center.
That mound is about a mile across, and the caldera itself is about three miles from side to side. We are about 9 miles northwest and a bit more than 3000 ft below the floor-level of the caldera. But it looks closer, and right at eye-level.
Our vantage point is on a hillside within the 1980 blast-zone, among the regrown greens at around 3000 ft altitude. From here, we can see high ridges north of St. Helens, still barren: grey tree trunks still lay like matchsticks, pointing away from the volcano; just over the ridge, dead wood stands just as naked, where the shape of the land protected them from the blast, but not from the intense heat and scouring ash.
Noble fir were replanted in the 1980s, and range from saplings that would make, in other circumstances, ideal living-room Christmas trees, to some 30 feet tall, or a bit more. These thick, young forests cover hillsides that were flattened in 1980, and burnt to crisps, and they dazzle, baffle and disturb the eye with their repetitive symmetry.
Nobles have an extremely neat, orderly habit of growth, and as economic of profile as they are, in large groups, they create an eye-troubling pattern hard to focus on after all the hours I’ve spent trying to un-focus, to see those 3-D pictures pop out of those computer-generated visual teasers that were a fad a few years ago. Some piece of my brain thinks these trees are meant to be part of that fun!
There are also groundcovers of grasses, small fuzzy and flowering alpine meadow plants, fungi, and berry-vines that, on a loose slope, grab at one’s feet. If one has foolishly rushed out of the house without one’s sturdy shoes, one is likely to come home with bloody red stripes across feet and ankles. (One is in the habit of sandals, in this mild autumn!)
Riding the highway through forested hills; we peered ahead through a misty autumn air, put on a little speed around each corner, eager for the mountain itself to be revealed… The last time we came this way was on a school bus for his third-grade field trip. There were distractions. We stopped along the way to visit the Buried A-Frame, the remains of someone’s summer home along the Toutle River, which is buried up to its second floor in dried mud and ash. I hardly remember where else and what else we saw, most of my attention being required for the herding of 9-year olds in fits of exhilaration. So last Thursday, it is like the first time.
Finally, suddenly, just around another bend, there it is: Framed by the forests and hills of southwestern Washington, it is a starkly ominous presence. As the road winds in and out of the coves of the hills, with every clear angle the volcano fills more and more of the field of view; the 24 year-old devastation emerges and dominates the scenery.
At one viewpoint, we turned and looked westward down the Toutle River, flowing grey with ash…
[note added 10/9: For the past several days the satellite images of the area increasingly show the river flowing more grey as loose ash enters the run-off from the glacier within the caldera, behind the old dome. The official photos from airborne cameras have shown a bubbling melt-lake where the action is getting hot between the dome and the glacier.]
8:30 PM-– The mountain is a grey ghost now, beneath a brilliant sky: Cygnus flies across the Great Rift of the Milky Way, which reaches from one horizon across the sky to the other. We don’t see this near the lights of Olympia, which are not that spectacular in themselves but quite enough to hide the splendor of stars. The Interstate-5 corridor and the cities, large and small that straddle it, create an orangey atmosphere, too, that taints the clarity of the sky night and day. That’s one reason anyone wanting to really see this volcano must come closer, even though the mountain is visible from miles away.
I didn’t intend to sit here all night, but wanted to wait until it was quiet. Really quiet. Just in case there was something to hear. For a couple of hours there was the constant ebb and flow of car traffic, about one vehicle coming into the area for every 5 or 6 going out, then one for every 3 or 4, and finally, hardly any traffic either way. From here, headlights show them coming either way for miles, and the hillsides contain and reflect the sounds. It was not until just after 8PM that I actually heard the silence of the land, broken only by a distant river.
Now, I hear one of the tiny toads we’ve seen around–huge voice for a critter an inch across! And a brief comment from a far-off coyote. There are still humans around: we hear the lacey sound of laughter from cars parked at least a mile away. Amazing, how clearly it carries! And a while ago we heard a childish voice followed by a parental imperative: “No, we aren’t playing squirt guns here. No! Put your pants back on!”
But there is no sound at all from the volcano.
11AM Oct 4– A steam eruption again this morning, around 10:40– The barnacles gathered it in hungrily, and sent it streaming out to us, back home in front of the TV. Makes me want to run out and find that nice vantage point again, but today makes other demands, so I don’t. Maybe tomorrow.
Everyone wants something exciting and spectacular so much, the news-folk want so hard to be the first to holler, “This is it!” They back up their “not yet…” monologues with enthusiasm, and then finally accept and acknowledge this was just another little burp, and the next Big Show is yet to come… Maybe hours, maybe years from now.
Last Thursday, when we were up at Johnston Ridge, Geraldo Rivera was up there, too: a reporter who has been known, if not respected, for years in the US, for his chasing after the spectacular: his was one of the first of the chair-swinging daytime talk shows; he committed a Prime Time Special to the opening of Al Capone’s underground vault, which turned out to be a repository of dust and the odd paper clip, as I recall.
Charlie heard him asking his cameraman, “How do you stake out a volcano?” The cameraman replied, “Well, at least you know where it’s going to be!
My thought, when I saw him, was, “Heck, we might as well go home.”
10 am Oct 5– There has been another steam and ash eruption on-going since about 9 this morning. Sadly, I am watching it on TV at home, but, happily, the views they are showing are from one of the helicopters, so we are getting spectacular views of the billowing clouds that we could not have gotten even if we made the drive. The weather is again clear, though change is expected today as the high pressure zone weakens and clouds move in from the Pacific.
The fascinating thing about a volcanic cloud is that it is so obviously not a water-vapor cloud: It has quite a different aspect, rising visibly, rapidly, and though the steam is white, the ash is grey, from light to very dark, and the cloud has not the translucence of even the darkest rain clouds. And while the steam and ejected material climbs the sky, on the outer edges, the heavy material is, at the same time, falling back to earth: It is much busier than a typical everyday storm cloud.
This event has quieted now, there is no evident ash, only steam filling the caldera, and overflowing gently into the sky, drifting off to the northeast. They showed a satellite view: the steam plume is quite visible from space.
1:30 PM Oct 12– The official word now is that magma has reached the surface of the new area of uplift, and can now be called an actual new lava dome. A large slab or fin of rock has thrust up through the surface of the dome and heat sensors are indicating rock is around 600 C (1000 F) and it has a pinkish color. How nice: It’s a girl!
The old dome built over several years following the 1980 eruption, mostly with slow effusions and upwellings, a few steam and ash eruptions, but nothing sudden or dramatic by a human perception of time. One reason for this is that the composition of the magma is mostly a mineral called dacite, which produces slow, sludgy and chunky lava. The lavas that flow in dramatic red rivers are basalt lavas.
I am hoping to drive down again this evening and see if I can catch on film the glow reflecting against the inner wall of the caldera.
(later edit: I made the drive, but at the safe distance, 10 miles away, any glow was too subtle for my eyes or camera.)
December 29, 2007
Nothing much of a publically dramatic nature happened at Mt St Helens in October, 2004. The mountain quieted, and after a time the news trucks, the photographers amateur and professional wandered off to other more exciting photo-ops, still envious of those who have been at the right place at the right time with the right equipment to capture that elusive and spectacular image that rewards patience, expertise, and sometimes just plain luck.
I still drive the 70 miles to the mountain from time to time, just to see what’s shakin’.