Shamefaced Helen

This weekend Uwe, Lorellen, Dan & I went to Mt.St.Helens. We had a nice campground within a forest of beautiful, tall trees.


On saturday we started early and went up the mountain - but above 3000 ft everything was in the clouds, and up at Johnson Ridge, where you normally get a great view of the crater, we couldn't see anything. Inside the visitor center they got a very nice film with original capture - at the end of the show, the curtains went up, but instead of the intriguing view of the crater, we saw a white wall of a giant milk bottle...
So we went down to 1000 ft and did the Hummock trail. I saw a nice beaver home on the side of a nice lake, which was created by two beaver dams. I also saw this nice tree frog, which I found on the ground - maybe this little bugger can't jump that high after all...



When we came back to the car we observed that the clouds were rising and we saw a patch a blue here and there - we decided to go back up - and believe it or not - we could see the valley - unfortunately not the crater.
But you could see the trail of destruction caused by the blast, the pyroclastic streams and the mud avalanche. This is now 29 years ago - and the trees had more time to grow, than I had. In the original capture you can very nicely see how all the trees were thrown into one direction and how the mountain slide injured the vegetation and left scars in the ridges and rocks. You have to open your eyes now to see all that, as the vegetation is growing back and what was gray 20 years ago is becoming green again...


(this is a photo of an information sign with the crater up at Johnson's Ridge)


(these 'hummocks' were brought into the riverbed by the landslide)


(the crater is still in the clouds, but you can see all the way of the landslide and the mudstreams - the clouds of ash were blown to the east)


(you can see all the trees that were cut by the blast in 1980 - the trees that had cover behind the hill were stripped naked by the blast - there was not enough oxygen inside the hot cloud to burn them)

So if you want to refresh what you learned in school or got interested check out that -link-!

Today we went to mayfield lake, which is created by a concrete dam - not the beavers choice of material - and I met some members of Lori's family there. We had a nice time and played carcassone - guess who won ;)