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Mt. St Helens
Mt. St Helens and Spirit Lake before eruption One
thing about living here in the Pacific Northwest is that we do have a
beautiful land in which to live. Yes, I know it does rain quite a few
days. Actually we don’t get as much rainfall in inches as many other
parts of the United States, but we get it in drizzle over many months in
the winter. Around here we start getting overcast skies and wet weather
starting usually around mid to late October and continuing on through
April and into May. It does not get hot, and what I mean by hot is over
80 degrees, until after the 4th of July. But when the weather
is clear it is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I am not
saying that just because I live here, but because I have seen most of
the states, and some other countries, and I would stack up the life
style and scenic beauty here against most other places. The rain and
gloom in the winter are depressing, but then again you do not have to
shovel it. A
lot of people in other parts of the states, who have never been here,
think we are close to Alaska and that we have snow and cold winters.
That is completely off. We have a bad snowy winter if we have snow
levels that total 6 inches over a winter in maybe 3 snowfalls. We are
actually closer to Southern California than we are to most of Alaska. No
there are no polar bears or Eskimos running around the streets, not to
say that is how it is in Alaska either. What we do have is large cities,
the Pacific Ocean and snow-covered mountains all very close. You could
easily go surfing and skiing all in the same day. Now
when I say mountains, I mean mountains. I will never forget when I went
to the East Coast and went to their so-called mountains. It was the
summer, but really I drove to the very top of the mountain. No,
mountains have glaciers on them and are covered with snow and ice all
year round. You only go to the top with pick axes and climbing gear, not
a car. All my life I have lived in the shadow of real mountains and
enjoyed their beauty. They are the predominate fixture in the sky all
over the state of Washington. There are 4 major mountains here in the
Cascade Range and many others in the Olympic Range. You probably heard
of one of our mountains that may have visited you in the form of ash. It
is called Mt, St Helens. It is still a snow covered mountain but not as
tall as it once was. It erupted violently in 1980 on a Sunday Morning in
May.
The mountain just before and after the eruption This
event brings me to what I want to tell you about in this chapter. I was
not a ham in 1980 and did not get back into radio until 1985. I cover
most of how I got out and back into Ham radio in other chapters. Anyway
I did get back in and in fact was an officer in the local radio club in
1985 when a call went out to the club to find volunteers to assist some
scientists from the University of California do some studies on Mt. St
Helens. The scientists were going to go on the mountain, go into what
was left of the lake there, which was called Spirit Lake and study the
effects of a volcanic eruption on trees and the lake. I
had my summer vacation time available and thought it would be nice to go
up to the mountain and see what it was like. Normal citizens were not
allowed to go on the mountain in those days as there still were a lot of
small eruptions that happened once or so a month. The mountain would
belch out gasses and smoke way into the air and send boulders the size
of Volkswagens thundering down the mountain and the crater. The
scientist needed radio operators, because the US forest service that had
control of the mountain at the time would not let anyone on the mountain
unless they had radio contact with forest service headquarters. The
University of Washington had measuring equipment on the mountain at that
time and could tell fairly reliably when an eruption was going to
accrue. If they thought one was eminent, they would tell all the
scientists to gather in an area and forest service helicopters would be
sent to take them off safely. This was the plan anyway and I was
notified when the scientists would need me, and I put in for my
vacation. I
got instructions from both the scientists and the forest service telling
me what I needed to bring, and what we would be doing. The day finally
came and me and another ham volunteer from the club, met the scientist
at the prescribed time and place on Windy Ridge on the way to the
mountain. I did not have a
hand held radio in those days and had borrowed a 2-meter radio from
another member of the club. The scientists had radios that we used to
communicate between them and us, but when we went to the forest service,
we used the ham radios to communicate. The scientists were of all ages
and did not look very scientific dressed in the garb they had on. They
had a lot of equipment, which included test equipment, diving equipment
and an inflatable boat. I
could look across the little valley there at Windy Ridge and see a gated
road that had a military truck with tracks on it like tanks had on the
rear of the vehicle. I found out that this was going to be the vehicle
we would be going into the mountain with. The scientist had already put
most of their equipment in the truck and all we had to do was to go over
to the truck and open the gate and get to work. First the scientists had
some forms that we had to fill out and sign. They said things like, we
would not hold the forest service or the university or just about anyone
else responsible if we got hurt or killed. All the forms and wording of
the forms made me understand right there and then, that this was a
serious event and not just fun. There was evidently, someone who thought
that I could get killed doing this and for the first time, I realized
the danger as well. We
got the truck running, got into the back with the equipment, and one of
the guys unlocked the gate and we were off and running. The road we were
on had been part of the road into Spirit Lake and the resort there that
had been owned by Harry Truman. No not the president, but a crusty old
guy who would not leave and was killed in the eruption. The road twisted
and turned and got higher and higher as we made our way to the area of
the lake and crater. There was very little left of the pavement of the
highway that had been there. I could look up ahead on the road as we got
around a bend and see that part of the roadway had been eaten away under
the part we were driving on. Some times the undercut was so bad that I
could not believe we were actually going to cross. A couple of times we
stopped the truck and the scientists got out and looked at the road
before we went over it. They even jumped on the road as if that would do
any good to see how solid the road was. The truck must have weighed 3 or
4 tons and I didn’t think the weight of the scientists jumping would
do anything to test the worthiness of the road. We went very slowly over
these undercut areas and I would look out of the back of the truck and
look way down the thousands of feet we would fall if the roadway gave
way and think that I would get on the 2-meter radio as we were falling
and have one last communication before I died. Kind of gallows humor,
but it was very scary and I did not like it at all. When we came out of
the winding semi-road that we were on, we came to an area that looked
like a desert with what I will call giant dunes. They were not really
dunes but because everything was covered with ash, and dust, it really
looked like dunes that were hundreds of feet high. There had been others
in the area and there was kind of a path. Most of the other people
working on the mountain at that time were brought in by helicopter and
stayed there for weeks at a time. I guess this was not possible as we
had a lot of equipment and the cost may have been prohibitive. As we
drove along, we would come to the bottom of one of these dunes and start
up. The truck was shifted into compound low, and the motor was roaring
as we started to climb. Some of the dunes were so high and steep,
that I thought we were going to tip over backwards more than once. As we
came down the other side, we started to slip sidewise and it seemed as
though we were on ice as the truck did not want to stay straight and the
driver was having difficulty stopping it. Again and again we went up and
down these monstrous dunes. On the level, what there was of it, the
truck pitched violently from side to side and I thought we may roll over
at any time. Of course it was by now quite worm in the truck and very
uncomfortable. After quite awhile over an hour as I remember, we
finally came to a plateau area where we stopped. I could see the crater
to the left of me and down over the plateau I could see what was left of
the once beautiful Spirit Lake. Now the lake was filled with trees and
pieces of trees floating on the lake. A lot of the trees had been blown
out of the ground in one piece including their roots and now were
floating upside down in the lake. I was just happy to know that I had
survived the trip to this spot, but in the back of my mind I knew that I
would have to do it all over again going home and coming back each day.
What I call the dunes looked like when I was on the mountain. The
scenery there was very eerie and to me looked like what I imagined the
moon to look like if I were standing on the moon. Everything was dusty
and sandy with very little color other than brown. There were some
indications that plants and bushes were trying to reestablish themselves
again, but at the time it was hard to see any living thing there except
us. We knew that there were other groups on the mountain and others
doing scientific research. We could see their vehicles up near the
crater, but no people so far. It was very quiet there with the exception
of the wind that blew dust and dirt in our faces. When the first
eruption happened, Spirit Lake was blown up on the sides of the other
high hills in the area and in fact over some of them. Taking the trees
and rocks and water with it. The water then rolled back into the basin
were it now is. A new lake was formed on the other side of one of the
hills. The lake was not just some small pond; it was a very large lake
and one of the better fishing places in the state. It had been so
beautiful, but now it was a mess of twisted tree limbs and junk floating
in it. This then was the place the scientists had come to do their
studies.
This is what the lake looked like from Windy Ridge. Kind of hard to see but there are many logs floating on the lake making kind of a log jam. Just thousands and thousands of trees dead and floating on the lake. The
scientists along with us, the communications guys, started to unload the
equipment. The first day on the mountain of course we had to unload
everything. The other days we had to only unload the very valuable
things like diving equipment and some specialized testing equipment. The
rest of the stuff we just left there over night until we left on the
last day. The head of the operation was an older gentleman from the
university. You could tell he was in charge and the others there had
great respect for him. He took us up on the crater and told us were we
were to stand and look down the hill at the rest of the party in the
lake. We were instructed that at least one of us had to be at our post
at all times. If the other wanted to hike or explore that was up to us,
but one of us had to be there with the radios and binoculars at all
times. The
rest of the scientists, packed their gear in the two inflatable boats,
put on their diving gear, put the rest of the gear in the boats and slid
them down the hill to the lake. The lake was encircled with a lip of
broken trees. This lip was 15 or 20 feet high in some places. Once the
guys got to the bottom of the hill, they had to carry the boats and
equipment up and over the trees. Once they got there, we made a test to
see if we had good communications with them in the lake and us and to
the forest service. Each day we had to check in with the forest service
to let them know we were there and that we were set up with the link and
ready to go.
As you can see here are some of the scientists going down to the lake to get ready for work. Look down to the lake on the left and side and you can see most of the scientists walking together to do the days work. They had the CB radio that communicated with us Hams who talked to the forest service. This
was pretty much the routine for each day. Other than the scary trip in
each morning, it was kind of boring. I took several hikes on the
mountain that week to see what it was like. I hiked all the way up to
the crater and went in to see what it was like. In the middle of the
crater there was a hill being created with the rocks and stuff that the
mountain put out during and eruption. This was called the dome of the
mountain. There were cracks in the dome, with smoke and steam coming out
of the cracks. On the sides of the crater, there were earth slides all
the time, with very large boulders crashing down to near the dome, all
day long. The end I came in, was the open end, with no walls. I did not
go near the walls on the other sides, because it was too far to walk in
a short hike and way to dangerous in that I could be easily hit by the
stuff falling off the walls of the crater. There
was a lot of test equipment and experiments on the mountain and in the
crater. We were told to stay far away from these devices and I was
careful not to disturb any of them. During the week, I did meet other
people working on the mountain. Some of them did not even go off the
mountain at night as we did. They just staid up there and slept in
tents. There were guys and some gals in other parties. Most were
scientists from other schools from all over the world. There were some
small pools of water here and there and the scientists would use these
pools to wash up in. After all there really wasn’t many people to see
you naked up there. If you had to go to the bathroom you did it just
about anywhere you wanted. There was however the occasional tourist
helicopter going over and it seemed that I would somehow cause one to
come over every time I had to go to the bathroom.
These are some of the instrument packages that other scientists put on the mountain to test various things. I have no idea what they did, but stayed far away not to disturb them. Just at the top of the largest peak on the other side was a lazar beam that could tell the people at the University of Washington that the mountain was going to blast off. At that point they were supposed to tell the forest service who would have evacuated us all.
These were scientists from other projects that were working up there. As you can see they had back packs and sleeping bags and must have been staying up there over night some nights. You can also see the end of the improved road to the are I call the dunes. I think these people were going to walk out for the day. It would have been a long walk, but at least they did not have to worry about the road caving away on the undercuts. The
work was going well and the scientists were very happy with their
progress. What it looked like to us, and what we could tell from their
conversations, was that they were diving in the lake, swimming among the
upside-down trees and taking measurements and pictures. A couple of the
scientists were always in the little boat on the lake and the others
were in the lake. The ones under the water were tied together with
ropes. They had to work to keep from getting tangled with the trees and
the roots. I can imagine how difficult the study was as it was just like
going in a forest, but the winds on the like made the trees move so that
it was kind of a virtual forest that changed all the time. It must have
been hard to find the way out. This was one of the reasons for the
ropes, but the other was to tell the swimmers that they had to get out
of the lake.
On the way out, just before the Windy Ridge area. this is what the trees looked like. As you can see many of them were just blasted off about half way up and burnt by the blast. There is an old miners car up there that is nothing but a metal shell. Everything that was not metal was scorched off the vehicle by the intense heat. I
did this activity for one week, Monday through Friday. At the end of the
week, we all felt good about what we had done. We were happy that there
had not been any emergencies and that we had not had to be evacuated. I
would kind of liked the helicopter ride, but under the dangerous
circumstances I was just as glad that I didn’t have leave the mountain
in that way. I had driven between the mountain starting point, which was
a campground on the way that the scientists were staying in, and my home
in Lacey. It was about 150 miles round trip each day. It was a long hard
trip and each day was filled with tension, excitement at times, and
other times with boredom.
This is what the mountain looks like today. Some of the lake has come back but it will take many thousand years for it to look like it did, if ever. Most of the trees are now out of the lake and it looks much better than when I was there. I am thankful for this experience, not many people have had the opportunity to go inside an active volcano. I know it is not as significant as astronauts going to the moon and leaving their footprints there or anything, but my footprints were there in the ash I am sure for a long time. To this day people are not allowed to hike or go in anyway near the areas. Someday the trees and vegetation will again come back and people will again be allowed to go where I had been, but for now I am satisfied that I had the chance to do this work. I know it was dangerous, because just after we were there, there was another very large eruption and if I had been there then, would have had to get off very fast or I would have ended up like old Harry, buried in the mountain somewhere. I didn’t tell Jackie or the kids about the dangers part until it was over. I was very scared each day as we went over that old road and the dune like hills. I could tell by the look on the scientist’s faces that they were scared too. Once we got to work each day we kind of forgot the danger. After all, it was the equivalent of setting on a ticking atomic bomb, which could have gone off at any time. If you ever saw the destruction that the original eruption caused, you could understand that the force of the blast was equivalent to many atomic bombs. Everyone felt that there would be some warning and that they could have gotten us off safely. But we all understood that there could have just as well been a sudden blast, and we would have been liquefied instantly. Thank God that didn’t happen and I am hear to tell the story.
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