Twelve years ago, I visited Mount St. Helens with my daughter. It was my first look at a volcano, and I came away awed by the extent of the destruction that is still evident so many years after the 1980 eruption. That trip in 2003 was on a bus tour. I recently had the opportunity to go again, this time driving a car and with a better camera. We approached it on a beautiful Summer day, with diminishing clouds it suddenly came into view.
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| Mt. St. Helens |
We kept driving to the end of the road at Johnston Ridge, and the mountain got bigger as the landscape got more desolate.
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| Mt. St. Helens from Johnston Ridge |
The lava dome in the crater is clearly visible. It causes the glacier to part and flow around it.
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| Lava Dome and Glacier |
We walked along some of the paths near the visitor center. Very little grows in the blast zone because the soil was stripped away. Here's a spot that was (relatively) sheltered from the blast, so trees grow there while all around it, hardly anything can grow. Stumps and logs remain from the blast.
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| Blast Zone |
If you look closely, there's a path in this photo, with people on that path. This ridge was stripped by the blast.
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| Blast Zone |
There are stumps everywhere. Even in this very rainy climate, the trees haven't reestablished the forest.
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| Stumps in the Blast Zone |
And here are a few more shots from the barren landscape.
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| Blast Zone |
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| Pumice Plain |
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| Wildflowers |
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| Blast Zone |
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| Blast Zone |
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