Mount St Helens

 The statistics are staggering, just as what you watched on tv probably, but more so in person

as it looks today 6/29/18

 Ok, I am 38 years late to get a before and after photo so I took a photo of a photo.

 Now a picture circa 1980

 There is 1300ft less elevation in the second picture. Rim to rim of the crater is a mile. Think about how much material that entails. Solid rock. It had been bulging out the north face for some time then a earthquake caused a massive landslide (largest ever). That landslide took the holding pressure off and she blew her top big time, laterally not vertically. Something like 68,000 acres of trees downed in minuets. The sediment from the explosion, and erosion flowed down the Toutle river valley.

 The sediment in that valley is up to 100ft thick. Where the river met the Columbia, 45 plus miles away, it blocked the Columbia till it could be dredged out. (some 20ft deep of sludge in the river). Mind boggling numbers.

 Yet with all the tall trees gone there is now greater bio diversity than there was prior.

 The Johnston Ridge observatory is named for David Johnston. He was the geologist on duty monitoring the mountain. His last words via radio "Vancouver, Vancouver this is it" They never found his body. Old Harry Truman who would not leave his lodge is somewhere under 200ft of ash/mountaintop. He was old, 85, maybe a little crazy but I tell you this. He stayed with that mountain rumbling less than a mile away. In  my book he had a pair of brass balls as big as they get. Talk about standing your ground. He said that lodge and lake meant more to him than life. He proved it.

V I D E O

seize the day my friends

can you stand your ground?