Washington Cascades - Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest - page 356

MAY 18, 1980
Where were you on May 18, 1980, when Mt St Helens blew its top? Pacific North-
westerners remember it as an unusually clear spring day, quickly extinguished by a
humungous black cloud. But first there was a loud bang. One of St Helens' most
perplexing riddles was the noise - or lack of it. People in the mountain's vicinity
(the so-called 'quiet zone') claim they heard nothing, whereas people as far away
as Vancouver, Canada, jumped out of their seats. Another curiosity was the dust
fallout. Due to prevailing winds from the west, the major population centers of
Seattle and Portland avoided any choking smog. Instead, the huge volcanic cloud
drifted east, cloaking Yakima in 5in of dust and bringing darkness at noon to
Spokane. Later on, dust was reported as far away as Minnesota and within two
weeks it had circled the globe.
Though scientists had known an eruption on St Helens was imminent, few had
predicted its magnitude. The loss of comparatively few lives (57) was partly down
to luck. First, the eruption happened on a Sunday, when the mountain's logging
parties were on weekend vacation. Second, it happened at 8:32am, 90 minutes be-
fore an army of homeowners was due to be let into the restricted 'red zone' to pick
up their possessions (the area had been evacuated two weeks earlier in anticipa-
tion of an imminent eruption). In fact, only four people were inside the restricted
zone at the time of the explosion: Harry Truman, the stubborn 83-year-old propri-
etor of the Spirit Lake Lodge; David Johnston, a US Geographical Survey volcanolo-
gist; and two further amateur volcanologists. All perished. The blast and subse-
quent landslide also claimed 7000 animals, 40,000 salmon, 47 bridges and over
185 miles of highway. The federal government was left with a bill for over $2.7 billi-
on in today's prices. President Jimmy Carter, after flying over the smoldering vol-
cano, is reported to have said: 'Someone said the area looked like a moonscape.
But the moon looks more like a golf course compared to what's up here'.
Eastside Entrance
More remote, but less crowded than Johnston Ridge at the westside entrance, is the
harder-to-reach Windy Ridge viewpoint on this less developed side of the mountain.
Here visitors get a palpable, if eerie, sense of the destruction that the blast wrought with
felled forests, desolate mountain slopes and the rather surreal sight of lifeless Spirit
Lake , once one of the premier resorts in the South Cascades. There are toilets and a
snack bar at the viewpoint parking lot, which is often closed until June. Steps ascend the
hillside for close-up views of the crater. A few miles down the road you can descend
600ft on the 1-mile-long Harmony Trail (hike 224) to Spirit Lake.