From Seattle, WA to Portland, OR 
via Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument
From Seattle, WA to Portland, OR
via Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument
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Waking up this morning, I feel a little melancholy. The visit with Ron and Carole was really nice and I miss them. In fact, for the first time in this trip, I really feel a little homesick. Ever since entering Washington, I have the feeling that I'm 'close to home'. Washington has a distinctively 'western' feel to it. Not cowboys and horses kind of western but more like the big metropolitan west coast attitude kind of feeling. It doesn't look like Los Angeles or San Francisco but the feel is there. So I feel like I'm home but of course I'm not in my own bed.
I spend an hour or so watching the local news and getting an update on the weather situation. What a big surprise, I am about to run into ANOTHER unseasonable weather event. Seems that there is some tropical moisture coming from the south so I can expect rain in a day or two as I head into Oregon and northern California. Not as bad as the unseasonable snowfall, hail, wind and rain in Montana and North Dakota, but at least my streak is continuing.
So I weigh my various options. I can be home in a two days, three days if I take it easy. But if I do that I'll miss seeing some friends in San Francisco that are always a pleasure to visit. I'll also miss seeing my sister and her husband, their crazy cat and friendly dogs not to mention the new furniture. I finally decide to stick to my original plan and just ride it as planned and have a good time.
The hotel is surprised to find out that I'm leaving a day early. I thought about sticking around but Seattle is a bit of a pain in the ass on a motorcycle. While I like the hotel and the location, it is much more expensive than my budget allows. I'm staggered that the car valet has a motorcycle license, as already checked out my bike in the garage and is very happy to bring the bike around. He's just started riding and has a much smaller bike and was a little excited to get a chance to ride (albeit a very short ride) on a big cruiser.
Out into Seattle traffic, it seems that getting to Interstate 5 should be a really simple operation. Unfortunately some road work has the direct paths cut off so I follow street signs down past the new baseball field and out into an industrial area. It is several miles to the on ramp but at least I don't need to disclose any missed turns or retell any getting lost stories. The weather this morning is beautiful. Not quite as clear as Saturday but sunny and warm. Traffic is the usual urban playground. Everyone is jostling for a slightly better spot. Ten lane changes later and you're still only a few car lengths ahead of where you started. Truck traffic is pretty heavy. Once past Tacoma, the road opens up a bit and things are pretty smooth.
One of my objectives for this trip was to get a better sense of where my family came from. In some ways, I feel like I'm doing very poorly in meeting this objective for a number of reasons. Weather in the Midwest kept me from visiting my mother's birthplace in Dubois, Indiana. I had a good visit at my father's hometown in Underwood, ND but again bad weather kept me from nosing around the general area as much as I would have liked. Finally, my dysfunctional attitude towards relatives has limited my contact to my father's family in particular.
Just south of Tacoma is the US Army base at Fort Lewis, Washington. This is one of the places where my mom lived during her childhood. There is a museum and I think it would be interesting to spend some time on the base. The federal government is now on a high alert (Republican paranoia) and so every visitor to the base must either be active duty military with ID card and proper stickers for their car or stop at the gate and present license, registration and insurance. There is a lot of grumbling from regular visitors without tags in the line ahead of me. The soldier issuing my pass is friendly as he goes through the process. Just as he is about to hand me the pass he remembers that the museum is closed on Mondays. Oh well, good intentions and all.
I get back onto I-5 heading south. The museum building faces the freeway only a couple of miles south of the main gate. Its a wonderful old wooden building covered with gingerbread decoration. Clearly this is a building that dates back to the earliest days of this army post. It is attractive but incongruous in its setting.
Soon,
I'm at Washington's state capital of Olympia. The building is a very
traditional one: light colored stone, pillared grand entrances and a
large dome. Olympia has been the capital of Washington since
territorial days. The capitol buildings, there have been two, were
deliberately built away from the rest of the city. In the earliest
days, it was necessary to cross a swampy area to get to the building
itself. The first wooden building was abandoned when the current
building was constructed after statehood. The capitol building is
part of a large collection of formal buildings housing the state's
administrative and judicial functions.
Both the motorcycle and I are hungry. I haven't eaten since last night and now I can feel it. I make a stop at a Hardee's of all places for some chicken. I am conscious that it is now early afternoon and I want to spend some time at Mount Saint Helen's Volcanic Monument. The turn off for the monument is about fifty miles south of Olympia off Interstate 5. The route partially retraces my route to Aberdeen from Yakima only this time I'm headed south rather than north. South of Olympia the interstate becomes a two lane highway again and so it feels like there is more traffic than there probably really is. I finally get to the exit for Washington 504, Spirit Lake Highway.
From this view, Mt St. Helens looks peaceful almost normal with few indications of events of May 1980.
From this view, the mud flow is just visible along the floor of the Toutle River Valley.
Same vantage point but with some zoom, the mud flow is very clear.
Coldwater Lake from the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center. The explosion destroyed the forest once it crossed the ridge to the right of this photo. Debris (near to the camera and off frame) dammed the Coldwater Creek forming this lake in the moments following the eruption.
This is Johnston Ridge. We are less than ten miles to Mt. St. Helens. This ridge bore the full brunt of the avalanche and subsequent lateral eruption. It will be a long time before a forest returns to this ridge. Smaller plants, for example, the wildflowers in the foreground are trailblazing.
This is the view from Johnston Ridge. All the land in this picture was moved by some part of the eruption that morning. There is a dense pumice field at the foot of the mountain. The impact of erosion can be clearly seen.
A closer view of the lower left of the photo above. |
There are three visitor's centers operated by the National Forest Service along with a county-operated educational center between I-5 and Mt St. Helens itself. The first visitor center is only a few miles of I-5 and provides an overview of the mountain's explosive eruption on May 18, 1980. I'm surprised by the amount of observation that was ongoing when the eruption occurred. I'm also amazed by the relatively small size of this eruption at least as measured by volume of material discharged during the event. As I recall, the eruption of Krakatoa in the late 1800s discharged approximately 150 times the volume of material. The explosion of Mt Mazama that created Crater Lake in Oregon was on the order of 1,000 times the size. From this first visitor center, Mount St. Helens appears peaceful. A snow capped peak not quite as symmetrical as Rainier but clearly volcanic in form. The appearance is so deceiving that I come close to skipping the trip to the second and third centers. What a huge mistake that might have been. Washington 504 is a great ride. To the west, I pass through a number of small communities, stopping in Toutle for gas. The trip is about 90 miles out and back and I don't want to get stranded. The first clue that something is out of the ordinary is a directional sign for the mud flow containment structure. A few miles further and a large sign announces that you are entering the blast zone. At first things seem pretty normal -- the forest has been replanted. And then almost suddenly you pass a point where the trees are just all gone. For miles and miles, you only see stumps and blown down tree trunks. Sometimes that is all you can see. As you continue to the second USFS visitor's center at Coldwater Ridge, Mount St. Helens continues to grow. Finally there is turn out where you can look down onto the area covered by the avalanche and subsequent landslides. The devastation is so awesome and nature's restoration so tentative, that the eruption could have been yesterday and not more than twenty years ago. The visitor's center at Coldwater Ridge focuses on the aftermath and natural activities that are working to restore the landscape. The visitor center offers a highly picturesque view down onto Lake Coldwater. Lake Coldwater was formed by the debris carried by the avalanche and subsequent eruption as well as the lateral eruption. Spirit Lake is larger than Coldwater but can not be accessed by vehicle from the western approach. Spirit Lake is the famous view of water covered by downed trees in the days after the eruption. From Coldwater Ridge, WA 504 heads down into an area that is covered with hummocks. Hummocks are the pyramid-shaped hills resulting when the side of Mt. St. Helens was blown over Johnston Ridge and landed in the valley. Then the road begins a long climb up to Johnston Ridge. For the last hour I have wondered why I as so cold. When I get to Johnston Ridge and realize that I'm at 4200 feet, I realize why I am so chilly despite the sunny day. Without trees, I lost my best visual cue that I have gained altitude. The view from Johnston Ridge is amazing. This is one time where seeing is believing. The magnitude of the geologic changes is sweeping and the scale can not be imagined. This has already proven to be an amazing day. Inside the observatory, the programs focus on the eruption and the immediate aftermath. What I did not realize is that a series of related events were triggered that morning. For many weeks, scientists and lay people had been watching the mountain. The scientists documented a huge bulge on the side of the mountain. Subterranean pressure had forced the ground to rise dramatically. Destabilized the mountainside collapsed and formed an avalanche of earth, ice and water that raced down the side of the mountain into Spirit Lake. It is estimated that this wall of material was moving at 100 miles per hour. Within seconds, the release of the overburden allowed the explosion to begin. For the first time, a volcano erupts from its side in a lateral explosion. The explosion literally blows the top and more of the side of the mountain directly at Johnston Ridge at more than three hundred miles per hour. The blast is deflected over the ridge and into the valley behind as well as to the west into the Toutle River Valley. Observers here, thinking they were safe from a normal vertical eruptions, die immediately. This explosion is caught in outrageous photographs taken by hikers at Mt Hood. A family is celebrating a child's 16th birthday by hiking to the summit. They take their pictures near the summit with Mt St. Helens in the background. The timing is uncanny. The first jets of the eruption are shooting from the mountainside. The father recounts that they braced themselves for a shock wave that never came but that the temperature rose by 15-20 degrees (F). As the eruption continues, they noticed the huge amount of lightening in the sky above the volcano. They decided to abandon their trip when metal objects, including his son's braces, began to vibrate from the electrical charge. The explosion did knock down all threes in area of more than two hundred square miles. The logs are not burned as there was so little oxygen in the air that combustion could not occur. A family survives near Spirit Lake by accidentally being in the shadow of a ridge. They begin to make their way out and are stopped by the fallen trees. They will spend the next thirty hours picking their way across the fields of giant fallen trees try to escape the volcanic dust. With the eruption now in progress, a third part of the mountain is in motion. Water trapped below the avalanche and displaced mountainside is now making its way to the surface and creating a hug mud flow. That is joined by melting snow and glaciers on top of the mountain. This flow moves down several streams and rivers chiefly the Toutle River. A man and woman recount awakening that morning. They know that something is happening on the mountain but like other observers and campers are sure they are safe due to their distance from the peak. They are making breakfast near the side of the Toutle River. They are both roused by the sound of logs being carried down the river on the mud flow. The air is filled with the smell of pine logs. They look upriver to see a railroad bridge being carried toward them on the mud flow. They try to make it to their car but are carried away by the river. His leg is crushed by the logs banging against each other. They both manage to mostly stay on top of the logs and survive. A Christmas tree lot provides such a strong cue to him that each year he relives those frightening hours. The next onslaught is airborne rocks and debris thrown up by volcano's eruption. The dust is so dense that it is dark on the ground. Pumice is falling as rocks the size of eggs. Two observers try to outrun the advancing cloud, having continued to take photos of the unfolding avalanche for too long, but eventually can not move safely. They wait for several hours before joining a convoy led by a logging truck. Men sit at both ends of the front bumper feeling for the road with sticks and giving the driver direction as to when to stop and turn. Ash fall would begin within the hour in cities such as Yakima and Spokane in western Washington. In Yakima, nearly two inches of ass would fall in the days following the eruption. Those cities, attempting to clean up the ash using water sprayers would deplete both cities' water supplies and require water use restrictions until the following springs. Helicopter pilots, dispatched within fifteen minutes to rescue people stranded by the eruption are at a loss. Their maps and memory of the area is antiquated in minutes by the changes to the landscape. The forest, lakes, roads, rivers -- all gone. My visit to Mt. St. Helens turned out to be truly awe inspiring. I can not recommend this visit highly enough. |
The ride down from Johnston Ridge to Interstate 5 allows for some real contemplation of this event. Thank goodness it did not occur more closely to a major population center. While fifty-seven people were killed that morning, the toll is very small compared to what could have happened without adequate warning.
The rest of the day's ride is nearly anticlimactic. The ride down the Columbia River Valley is beautiful. The bridge crossing is very dramatic. I finally duck into a small mom and pop motel for the night. Tomorrow, I'm off to Grants Pass.
Depart Seattle on Interstate 5 heading south.
Exit I-5 onto Washington 504 Spirit Lake Highway heading east.
At Johnston Ridge Visitor Center (end of WA504), turn around and head west on WA504.
At intersection with I-5, enter I-5 heading south.
Cross state line into Oregon
Arrive Portland
(c) 2001 Thomas N. Engler Revision Date: 07/16/2001
