Up Close & Personal With Mt. St. Helens!

David has been waiting for this for 36 years!  He finally gets to hike out into the blast zone of Mt. St. Helens!

At this time of year, very few trailheads are open, due to snow on the high roads, but we were able to hike the Boundary Trail, from Coldwater Lake up to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, a round trip distance of 10 miles, with 1,500 feet of elevation gain and loss.  The views all along this trail were spectacular!

Here is David at the junction of the Boundary Trail with the Hummocks Trail off Route 504.  Our good old friend, Mt. St. Helens, presides over the scene in the background:

The first part of our hike was through Hummocks that were formed by the Mt. St. Helens eruption.

 The Hummocks are massive mounds of rock, ash, and mud that were piled unceremoniously around the floor of the new Coldwater Lake valley by the eruption. But these aren't just piles of rubble. Some of the hummocks tower 500 feet into the air and cover a once-grand ancient forest. As the pyroclastic mud flow from the eruption came down-valley, it was able to spread out laterally. Some of the resulting deposit compacted more than other portions, causing much more lumpiness. Groundwater and surface water, superheated by underground magma, exploded in many places, leaving huge holes all over as water from streams and ice from ex-glaciers eventfully encountered hot rocks. New stream banks failed after the lahars roared through. And as time passed, chunks of ice that had survived everything else eventually melted, leaving kettles behind.  The habitat among the Hummocks is primarily open areas with some shrubs, and it can be quite windy at times. Small ponds in the hummocks create wetlands that provide water for wildlife and an oasis for dragonflies. Red alders dominate the riparian areas where water is plentiful. Young stands of firs have begun to rebuild the forest, especially in the lower-elevation areas.

This is one of the gorgeous ponds and lakes formed by streams running among the hummocks:

A little further on, we spotted the first evidence of the power of the Mt. St. Helens eruption:  a massive tree trunk embedded in the ash and stones spewed up by the volcano:

Someone had carefully erected a balanced pile of rocks at the trail junction, and we thought it was pretty amazing:

As we hiked, we gained elevation.  Here is a view of Mt. St. Helens from higher up on the cliffs above the Toutle River Valley.  If you look carefully in this photo, you'll spot hummocks and cinder cones sprinkled throughout the valley:

Here is a view, looking south, of the range of peaks lying west of Mt. St. Helens and south of the North Fork of the Toutle River, which is visible in the photo:

We rose so high, that we could see the entire expanse of Coldwater Lake below us, including its mysterious stone island:

At about 3,500 feet, we began to encounter snow on the trail.  Here, Kathy is showing how to master post-holing in the snow:

About a mile before the turn-around point for our hike, we reached Loowit Viewpoint, where we took a selfie with our favorite volcano:

While the mountain looks beautiful in its mantle of snow, it remains active, and potentially very dangerous.  Just about where we were standing in this photo, a photographer, Robert Landsburg, died documenting the 1980 eruption.  Landsburg was born in Seattle, Washington, and lived in Portland, Oregon, at the time of the eruption. In the weeks leading up to the eruption, Landsburg visited the area many times in order to photographically document the changing volcano. On the morning of May 18, he was within a few miles of the summit. When the mountain exploded, Landsburg took photos of the rapidly approaching ash cloud. He then rewound the film back into its case, put his camera in his backpack, and then laid himself on top of the backpack in an attempt to protect its contents. Seventeen days later, Landsburg's body was found buried in the ash with his backpack underneath. The film was developed and has provided geologists with valuable documentation of the historic eruption.

Here is the last of the photos he took.  The ash and rocks are rushing toward him and the lens of his camera.  If you look closely at the photo, you can make out the image of the mountain as it is exploding, and it is in the same orientation to the photographer as the mountain is in our photo above:

Back to our peaceful year 2016, a little further on, Kathy took a minute to contemplate the awesome majesty of this huge volcano, which decimated everything in the area where we were pausing:

Finally, we reached our destination:  Johnston Ridge Observatory is named after David Johnston, a 31 year old American USGS volcanologist who died during the May 18, 1980 eruption. A principal scientist on the monitoring team, Johnston perished while manning an observation post at the location of the present Observatory, which is named in his honor. He was the first to report the eruption, transmitting "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" before he was swept away by a lateral blast. Johnston's remains were never found, but state highway workers discovered remnants of his USGS trailer in 1993.

Our David took a rest and digested his lunch with a quiet volcano in the background:

Once we finished our lunch, we ambled out to the viewpoint and took one last photo of Mt. St. Helens.  Kathy exclaimed in awe over the mountain's majesty!