Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Eruption of Mt. St. Helens

I was in Lewiston Idaho when it went off. Soon to be wife and I were at the movie theater, don't remember which movie. Came out and it was dark, looked like it was snowing but the smell and weight of the snow flakes told me I was wrong, and it doesn't snow at that time of year. Snow plows cleared the roads for several days and had to change air filters frequently. Quite the experience.

When I was in the Army on active duty at Ft Lewis/ Madigan AMC, me and some of the other guys in the barracks use to go down and climb Mt St Helens in 77 and 78.

I was in Minnesota by the time It blew....

What amazed my memory, was how the Top 1300 feet, where we use to go up to at times... had completely blown off...

That crazy old Harry Truman, that wouldn't evacuate ended up dying up there. He was like 85 or so at the time.... which means he would have been born in the 1890s.

That was kind of sad.

Not sad, he knew what was going to happen and chose to go that way.

Saw it live from my work place in Portland. Went back a few years later and went through the area and some kind of visitors center. Words could not describe the destruction

😂. Good one.

I was stationed at Ft. Lewis when it happened. Some of our dudes were stuck in the south Ranier training area iirc. Quite an impressive ash cloud and I believe I got the second eruption in some old photos.

Well, a long time ago God made himself a volcano. Then those people acted like idiots and moved into the area around it. God's volcano did what volcanoes do. It wasn't his fault that people are stupid. Wait until Rainier blows up with a few million people huddled around like idiots.

this was there long before the people were:

Naples today is chock full of people who wonder why the residents of Pompeii were so dumb. As the very same volcano rumbles over their heads.

I was living in Wasilla, AK when Mount St. Helen's erupted and my truck was covered with ash. Amazing that it traveled that far.

You tell your kid that a candle is hot but he keeps playing with it. You finally give up and let him get burned to learn his lesson. People knew very well what a volcano can do but they still build their homes next to it and used it for a playground. They had months of warning from those who know about that sort of thing but they kept coming and refused to leave. God finally let them get burned and they still didn't learn.
Old Harry Truman said he wasn't afraid of any ol' volcano that hadn't erupted in the 50 years he'd been there. He didn't live long enough to learn anything.

We may read about Mt Rainier one of these days

I have family in the Tacoma-Puyallup area. They've told me about the volcano 'escape routes' and there are signs all along the main highways showing which way to go to escape it if it blows. What a joke. Those highways already have immobile traffic during rush hours. If Rainier was to blow, all their escape routes would do would be to allow a million people to die in their parked cars instead of at home.

You are welcome Hammer.
Isn't it amazing how much destructive power it had?
I missed how many Hiroshima B's the first eruption was equivalent to. Did you catch that?

The first blast sent scalding ash and debris 300 mph down the slope! I know what you mean. That's like telling kids when they see a flash at ground zero to " duck and cover."

I was working for the USGS at the time. A friend of mine was taking care of a tilt meter installed on the summit of the mountain. After it blew his boss asked him if he thought they might be able to find the equipment. His response to him was that it was most likely in low earth orbit. Another friend was due to go to Harry Trumans lodge to change paper on a smoke drum recorder but he over slept and had not left yet. He smiled at me as he told the story and told me that sometimes it pays to be slow.

The USGS planted a tree in David Johnstons honor at the Menlo Park campus. Years later they built a new building where the tree was so instead put a memorial rock in his memory. I knew of him but did not know him personally. He was a young PHD scientist and I was a young physicl science technician.

A couple of years after the event we installed 2 seismic recorders with borehole accelermoters placed 100 feet in the ground. One was at the Cold Water site and the other was at Spirit Lake. There was still steam rising from the ground at the Spirit Lake site. As we were working we would be treated to occasional ash falling on us. It was kind of earie to be working and have ash falling thru the clouds onto us. We were in radio contact with Vancouver and they were monitoring the volcano and assured us that they would let us know in time to get out it the mountain started acting up.

The borehole instrument did not last very long as the heat 100 feet down in the debris flow cooked it. After we retieved it I removed the outside casing and you could tell which way it was leaning in the bottom of the hole as the wax from the waxed string used to tie the wire in was puddled in one corner of the casing.

Interesting work.
Not very many in your department ever had that detail.

And to think Mount Saint Helens is a small volcano compared to Yellowstone ! If Yellowstone blows were all screwed !

Woooh doggies!
I'd hate to see what's under old faithful.
LoL

There's lots of geological evidence that previous generations saw a lot more volcanic activity. As a boy, we'd play in the pumice quarry near my house in WV. It was the last place you'd think that there would be magma.

In 2019 I visited the visitor center 4 miles from the St. Helens summit. The ranger held up a square she had made, one meter on a side, and told us, "Imagine 60,000 tons per second going through this square, 4 miles from the eruption."

Sounds like my girlfriend's IUD