Mount St. Helens

[Humptulips]

When it blew I remember thinking we'll never get any ash here. I'm NW of it quite aways and with the prevailing winds and the south flanks of the Olympics between us it seemed impossible. I was working only about a mile from home and I think it was Tuesday when I got up to go to work there was a strange yellow color outside. The ash was coming down. We didn't get much but I was pulling riggin' and I remember breathing that stuff the rest of the summer. Every time a turn took off you got a dose. We tried wearing dust masks but you could not suck enough air through them when you were working hard. Threw them away the first day. I don't imagine it was to good for our lungs. I never worked in the blast zone after but them guys that did had to have ended up with some ill effects from all that ash in the air.

 

[wood4heat]

Oregonians were affected as well. I was here when that happened. St Helens is all of 50 miles north of my father's old house in Gresham, OR. There was a lot of resentment from locals net being able to go home, as they had evacuated the area before the eruption. Old Harry Truman that lived in Spirit Lake refused to leave. He is buried there under tons of ash. The mountain went Ka-Boom! and fortunately for us the blast was toward the north and the winds were from the west/southwest when it happened. So the main blast ash went mainly east/northeast. Walla Walla was buried pretty deep in ash. The stuff was floating all round here for weeks after that. Portland got several dustings of the stuff when the winds shifted from the north, and my father's yard got about a half inch of ash total. It was not like snow, it did not melt. The ash is mainly puffed silica, not healthy to breathe. We wore surgeons masks when we went outside. It also choked up engines and my motorcycle had a lot of fine dust in it when I drained and changed the oil. The air was full of dust for weeks and the sunsets here were eerie. Deep reds, greens and purple shades of clouds and sky late into the night.

More recently on several trips to Cascade National Park in the mid 00's, St Helens was venting small steam and ash plumes again, but they were localized. You could see it from I-5 and from various places around Portland. St. Helens used to look like an ice cream sundae. Now it is clipped and looks rather uncharacteristic of a Cascade stratovolcano. It lost a lot of height in the eruption, going from to 9,677 ' to 8,366'.

Just about nailed it. The only thing you didn't mention were the tremors leading up to the eruption.

I was 7 at the time and living with my mom in Vancouver. The day of the eruption I was on a bike ride with my dad in Gresham! I remember seeing the cloud building and dad saying, "time to get home!" Then the darkness and ash falling. Weeks of having to wear the masks every time I went outside. Everybody filling jars with ash as keepsakes. I've still got one!

 

[AKDoug]

I flew south to Los Angeles on Alaska Airlines a couple months after the eruption. The pilot decided to let us all have a look from above. We circled once so the right side of the plane could look, then reversed so the left side could look. You'd never have that happen in this day and age. It made quite an impression on my 11 yr old mind.

 

[_RJ_]

15 years ago my parents re-roofed their house. When they were taking it off there was a bunch of ash on top of another roof. Haha, who puts shingles on top of ash covered shingles?

 

[windthrown]

Apparently whoever owned the house before your parents did. Or the roofing contractor. My dad and I pressure washed his houses after the mountain settled down. The roofs were the worst. A low pitch gravel topped asphalt shingle roof will catch a lot of ash, and it was jagged puffed microscopic glass and silica for the most part, so it stuck to everything.

 

[Skeans]

I'm down by Longview and the Columbia River is still got ash in it they are always having to dredge it for the ship. And from what I understand we didn't hardly get any ash here. And it still sends a few clouds off here and there randomly which is still impressive, not looking forward to Mt. Hood or Mt. Rainier to go off one day.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Gologit]

When St Helens blew I'd just left the Yakima area to take a job with a helicopter logging outfit in California. I thought maybe I'd left Washington just in time.
I was gone about a week.
My new employer contracted to Weyerhaeuser to do salvage. The helicopters didn't get along well with the ash and went back to California. Most of the falling crew stayed on and we did what we could. There wasn't really much falling to do. Almost everything we did was bucking blowdown It was hard on saws. We wrapped the air filters on everything with panty hose but we'd still change filters on the saws several times a day and just throw the old ones away. The saws didn't last long either.
Chains were a constant problem. We had one guy that did nothing but grind chains for the rest of us . Changing chains several times a day wasn't unusual.
I remember what that part of the country looked like before the blast. It was beautiful.
I thought doing burn salvage was dismal work but volcano salvage was bad in every way you can define the word.

 

[windthrown]

Silica is really hard on steel. Silica has a hardness of 6.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale. Steel files have a hardness of around 6.5. So cutting in volcanic ash around here is like cutting in super hard chain file "dust".

 

[wood4heat]

I raced the Woodland Winter MX for years and that crap was in the mud. Pretty much guaranteed I'd be replacing linkage bearings every spring.

It was the same with Raineer beach across the river from Longview.

 

[windthrown]

I'm down by Longview and the Columbia River is still got ash in it they are always having to dredge it for the ship. And from what I understand we didn't hardly get any ash here. And it still sends a few clouds off here and there randomly which is still impressive, not looking forward to Mt. Hood or Mt. Rainier to go off one day.

Mt Hood is far less likely to blow according to many 'experts'. Of course, when I was a kid here they told us in school that the Cascade Mountain range was extinct, with Mt Lassen being the last eruption that would happen in 1917. That 'fact of science' ended in 1980 of course. I have been up at Crater Rock on Hood (I ski patrol on Mt Hood in winter) and there are still vents up there giving off a lot of gasses. The last time Hood blew was just before Louis and Clark came through here in 1805, they guess sometime in the 1780s or 1790s. The Sandy River was still silted up then and L&C mapped it as a 'sandy river', not intending it to become named the Sandy River, but the name stuck.

More likely to blow at this point are Baker, Adams and Rainier. Adams is in a pretty remote area, but is supposedly primed. Baker and Rainier are on some top ten volcano watch lists. Geological time is long though, so it may be many years before any of these blow again. They will all blow again though. The Juan de Fuca plate is still being shoved under the North American plate which is causing these new Cascade peaks to continue to erupt and reform.

 

[singinwoodwackr]

When St Helens blew I'd just left the Yakima area to take a job with a helicopter logging outfit in California. I thought maybe I'd left Washington just in time.
I was gone about a week.
My new employer contracted to Weyerhaeuser to do salvage. The helicopters didn't get along well with the ash and went back to California. Most of the falling crew stayed on and we did what we could. There wasn't really much falling to do. Almost everything we did was bucking blowdown It was hard on saws. We wrapped the air filters on everything with panty hose but we'd still change filters on the saws several times a day and just throw the old ones away. The saws didn't last long either.
Chains were a constant problem. We had one guy that did nothing but grind chains for the rest of us . Changing chains several times a day wasn't unusual.
I remember what that part of the country looked like before the blast. It was beautiful.
I thought doing burn salvage was dismal work but volcano salvage was bad in every way you can define the word.

I always wondered how that timber was even viable...I imagine the mills had to thoroughly wash it before it got to the saws.

Seems St Helens is threatening again...

 

[BeatCJ]

I remember what that part of the country looked like before the blast. It was beautiful.
I thought doing burn salvage was dismal work but volcano salvage was bad in every way you can define the word.

I went up there with my cousin to change to oil on a yarder one Sunday. It definitely left an impression. After they got approval to rebuild the highway, I spent quite a bit of time up there surveying. Humping surveying equipment for miles, up and down the creeks. We asked for a saw to cut brush, they guy that chose it got us an 045 with a 24" bar. Talk about overkill. We used our machetes 99% of the time.

 

[wood4heat]

A few pictures of the area from a hike last summer.

Started out from Johnson Ridge Observatory:

2913 by wood4heat on Arboristsite.com

A shot from the trail:

2912 by wood4heat on Arboristsite.com

Ignore the ugly mug in the foreground. Spirit Lake and Mt. Adams are behind him. It amazed me that the lake is still plugged with logs from the eruption 35 years ago!

2911 by wood4heat on Arboristsite.com

And St Helens Lake. I'm not positive but think this lake was formed during the eruption.

2910 by wood4heat on Arboristsite.com

 

[ArtB]

Have 32 acres of fir and alder sw of mossyrock, right on the edge of the red zone.
Was in Seattle that morning, but neighbors near the cabin said one could not see their hand in front of face at 9 AM.

Still find ash in the crotches of alder trees when I cut one.

Pulled this sign down and saved it (now framed at entrance to our basement) after the red zone was reopened. Sign was about 1000 ft from the cabin.

Had just finished building the cabin and went down there 2 weeks after eruption with trailer with some furniture, wondering if anything was damaged - only about an inch of basically masonry sand, all the same grain size like playground sand, sheriff still had a roadblock on the road, let us by seeing trailer full of household goods and property in area - he though we had 'evacuated' from a couple of weeks.

 

[Hddnis]

Some friends of my uncle wanted him to go hiking with them. He said "No, my hang-glider just arrived and I'm going to Tillamook to try it out. You guys can come if you want, I'll let you fly it."

They said no, far too dangerous, told him he'd break his neck at least.

Sadly his friends were killed by the eruption. My uncle talked about having survivors guilt, even though he couldn't have done anything at all to save them. I don't know if they were some of the bodies found or not, I'll have to ask him next time I see him.


Mr. HE

 

[wood4heat]

Some friends of my uncle wanted him to go hiking with them. He said "No, my hang-glider just arrived and I'm going to Tillamook to try it out. You guys can come if you want, I'll let you fly it."

They said no, far too dangerous, told him he'd break his neck at least.

Sadly his friends were killed by the eruption. My uncle talked about having survivors guilt, even though he couldn't have done anything at all to save them. I don't know if they were some of the bodies found or not, I'll have to ask him next time I see him.


Mr. HE

Hang gliding in Tillamook? I wonder if he was actually headed to Cape Kiwanda I just South of Tillamook in Pacific City. I remember watching guys hang gliding off the Cape around that time. I could have watched your Uncle hang gliding as a kid!

I'm headed down there tomorrow to go fishing with my Dad and Uncle.

 

[moondoggie]

Good read guys Thanks.

 

[dhskier2]

Nice article here-

http://www.pressherald.com/2015/05/17/a-look-back-35-years-after-mount-st-helens-deadly-eruption/

 

[Joe46]

Always believed the Mt. St Helens/Spirit Lake was one the most picturesque sites a person could see.

 

[gomoto69]

I live in salmon arm bc, very north end of the okanagan valley in southern bc, we had a noticable amount of ash settle on cars for several days. Oh, and naniamo is bathtub capital because of the annual bathtub races from the mainland to naniamo, people mounted outboards and whatnot to bathtubs, 30 some miles i think of ocean crossing to the island, quite a spectacle! Not sure if that's still going on or not!