Mount St. Helens

Seaquest State Park

We headed south to camp in Seaquest State Park. The campsites are underneath a tall canopy of trees. After lunch we took WA 504 toward Mt. St. Helen. There were several vista points along the way. Our first stop was the Forest Learning Center. Weyrhauser explained their forestry operations after the eruption. They first made use of much of the timber that had been blown over after the eruption. They also found out that to replace the forest, they had to plant seedlings below the layer of ash. The ash did not have enough nutrients for growth. Today they have a healthy, tall forest that they have begun harvesting. It was quite interesting to see video of their automated saw mills.  Even cutting down trees in the forest has been made easier with machines that can cut the tree, chop off its limbs, and cut it into proper lengths for loading on the trucks.

Mount St. Helens

We continued on to several viewpoints of the mountain until reaching the Johnson Ridge Observatory. Here we listened to a ranger talk explaining what happened here in 1980. The explosion destroyed an area the size of Chicago in less than 4 minutes, burning the trees nearby and blowing down the trees further on. But those who were nearby saw this in silence! The sound waves went straight up, eventually bouncing off the layers of the atmosphere, so that those farther away heard the explosion. A wall of mud 40 foot high flowed down the mountain completely changing the landscape. Where once there had been 30 ponds, today there are 150 including Cold Water Lake. The temperature of the water rose to 90 degrees Farenheit. 

A national monument was created which allows us to study how nature recovers from a volcanic explosion. It took 2 years for elk to return, by then, there was enough vegetation for food. The first summer saw one prairie lupin blossoming, in five years they covered the valley. After the explosion, over time a 1000 foot high lava dome formed and today a new glacier 600 feet thick surrounds the dome.