A view of Mt. St. Helens, looking to the northeast, with Spirit Lake to the left.
Back in early November, BrianR of Clastic Detritus won the Where in the West contest that you can sometimes find here on this blog. I didn't get around to posting a second look at the mountains in question, which were Mt. Rainier in the distance, and Mt. St. Helens in the foreground. So here are a couple more pictures of Mt. St. Helens, which as many people know or remember, erupted with a bang on May 18, 1980.
Above, a somewhat mysterious view of Mt. St. Helens, looking almost due east, with the Toutle River in the foreground and on the left side of the photo.
A close-up photo of a portion of the Toutle River.
Better photos of Mt. St. Helens can be found by rummaging through the Mt. St. Helens links above, and from derivative links therein which will include this YouTube "video", and also see this Geotripper post by MJC Rocks (along with a couple photos of Mt. Rainier).
3 comments:
I actually heard Mt. St. Helens erupt, though I didn't know it at the time. On May 18, 1980 I was working as a summer field assistant for a mining company, exploring for molybdenum in the Monashee Mountains of southern British Columbia (50.9925N, -118.8534W; 364 miles from St. Helens, according to Google Earth). That morning, we were near the top of a south-facing mountain slope doing some mapping. We were startled to hear several really deep booms coming from the southwest, which sounded like far-away thunder, but we were puzzled because it was a perfectly clear day with no clouds visible all the way to the southern horizon. It wasn't until we returned to camp that night and heard about St. Helens on the news that we put 2 and 2 together and realized what he had heard.
Cheers,
--Howard (Calgary, Alberta)
Howard, that's a neat story; I didn't know it could be heard so far away! I was in Reno at the time, way to the south, found out about it after getting to work. A field trip to the area promptly ensued - but by the time we got there, clouds had socked in everywhere, the roads were blocked, and so we didn't really see anything.
I'm sure the fact that the explosion was on the north side of the mountain, the shock-wave(s) directed more-or-less straight in our direction, helped a lot. If it had erupted straight up, or toward the south, we may have heard nothing.
--Howard
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