Mt St Helens stories, tell yours here

[skyking1]

There are a few of us PNW natives here. Post up your experiences with the eruption of 1980 and other related events.
I'll go first
I was living in Selah, a bedroom community of Yakima 81 miles downwind of the mountain. Mom and I were heading over to change some irrigation at the bigger berry farm, and we noticed that it looked like a nasty spring thunderstorm was heading our way. We had no idea what had happened. We got the valves switched and hurried back for home.
That was when I started seeing the early ash fall. You could not see it in the air, but it was on the road and when the oncoming cars drove through it, you could barely make it out like that swirling that light snow does on a cold day.
We made it home and it was completely dark by 1030 or so.
Now you could hear it on the aluminum patio roof, and the little birds came into the patio and just landed in there, completely confused. I could just pick them up.
That afternoon the sun appeared again at about 430, briefly glowing red through the ash before going out of sight again.
The next day we could see the results. Flowers and plants were laden with it, sometimes weighed down completely. We had between 1/2" and 3/4" of ash.
The next days it got unseasonably hot. We had a flatbed dump truck and I spent the next few weeks "hauling ash" out of the cities to dump sites.
I got good and burnt on the left arm and left side of my face, like this guy on the original Star Trek.

 

[FlaGator]

I had a summer job in 1980 that took me to eastern WA-Spokane, The Palouse, Tri-Cities. I was surprised that in late July a stiff breeze in Spokane could stir up enough ash to make it look foggy. Still have the ash I collected SW of Spokane.

 

[mf15]

No story but here is the ash,friend at work brought it back to the east coast to give a bottle to everyone.
oldmike

 

[razztazz]

I was living in Las Vegas at the time and experienced no manifestation of it at all except what was on TV and in da papers. My brother in Philadelphia, however, sent me a little vacuumed sealed plastic bag of ash he was able to collect off his car.

 

[pacergal]

Was working at the hospital, could see it from the hall window. The security and maintenance folks were out in the parking lot with hoses at shift end, to help rinse cars before leaving. You did not want to use your wipers on that stuff--scratched windshields. Employee health came around a gave masks before leaving the building.
Ash was everywhere for a long time, thick cement like when wet, puffed up around you as you walked when dry.

Second eruption, I was at our little rented home, could see it from our front porch. Watched the whole thing, not as much ash that time.

 

[shortstop14]

We could see the eruptions from the south leading up to the big one. We were downwind of the ashfall most of the time, but at times we ended up with a coating of ash.

After we bought our house, I had to dig out all the outside drainage going to dry wells to replace the pipes filled with the cement-like ash. Apparently the prior owner washed the ash from the roof down the drainspouts.

 

[pb4uski]

I wasn't there for the eruption but years later flew over it and the devastation, mostly trees bent over like toothpicks, was unbelieveable.

 

[skyking1]

when I started flying, the typical sightseeing trip with friends was a loop to Rainier and St Helens.
I watched the land heal from above. Then they built the road to Johnston ridge and the visitor's center there. We have been there and to Windy Ridge several times over the years.

 

[Irishgirlyc58]

I’m in Northern California and what I remember is that it screwed up our weather that summer. All that ash in the air I assume?

 

[Irishgirlyc58]

All kidding aside about the weather impact I remember the devastation from the eruption.

 

[Out of Steam]

It's one of those stories that I don't recall in detail because I was out of the US at the time. My memories of Mt. St. Helens are mainly from documentaries that came out later.

Having been away from home when they happened has shaped my memories of a number of major events. I was in the woods hiking for the deaths of both JFK, Jr. and Princess Diana. Not carrying a portable radio, and not owning a cell phone at the time, I learned of both by turning on the radio in the car.

 

[skyking1]

You can dig up and find the ash layer easily. it is best preserved along fence lines.
As much as we hauled tons and tons of ash out of the eastern cities, it was nothing like the devastation of the Toutle river valley. You can still see that just east of I-5.
North Fork Toutle River · Washington

The river sent huge volumes of debris into the Cowlitz, and into the Columbia River, raising the riverbed and shutting off river traffic to Portland.
Each year 10x the pre-eruption sediment enters the system and the Corps of Engineers has dealt with it.

Nice article here in the Columbian:
Mount St. Helens miracle: How the Army Corps protected the region’s safety and economy after 1980 eruption

If you drive I-5 from Portland to Seattle, look west as you approach the Toutle River bridge and you will see a huge ridge of ash that was dredged from the Toutle and Cowlitz rivers there.

 

[folivier]

We visited Mt. St. Helens 18 years after the eruption on a family trip. While driving to the lookout quite a few miles before we started seeing gray cinder on the side of the road. I was amazed at how many dead trees there were even though some areas had been replanted.

 

[audreyh1]

We were able to visit the Mt St Helens Johnson Ridge Observatory in 2011, so 31 years later. A spectacular drive, and you could see some areas of devastation down along the river - piled up trunks etc., but most of it was very green save the immediate area around the blast crater.

 

[Gallaher]

Was living in Corvallis, 130 miles south attending Oregon State.
I thought it was a huge sonic boom.

 

[donethat]

Don't live in the PNW but this was one of the most impactful days of my life. I became a father for the first time.

 

[Dtail]

Don't live in the PNW but this was one of the most impactful days of my life. I became a father for the first time.

Well congrats on that.

 

[bada bing]

I went to high school in Gig Harbor and still was back and forth between Washington and Alaska at the eruption time. I was in one of my student phases and enrolled at UW and was off for the day visiting family around Tacoma and Gig Harbor. When the mountain blew I was out flying RC gliders on a elevated bench at the Fircrest landfill (Tacoma) that morning. There were clear skies and a clear view to the south and you could clearly see the mushroom cloud in the distance. The Tacoma area got the slightest covering of ash with the prevailing wind pushing most of it west-northwest. My brother was at WSU in Pullman and they got buried and classes were ended early for the year. I had been hunting elk in the St Helens watershed the previous fall so I'm familiar with the area around the volcano. I moved to Alaska full time in 1981 and only visit Washington occasionally since.

I've been in the vicinity of a lot of eruptions over the years. My area in Alaska has had significant ash fall from Mt Redoubt (1989,2009), Mt Augustine (1986, 2006), Mt Spurr (1992) and all three are prominently visible from my back deck looking across Cook Inlet. As a child in 1965 I was living outside Clark AFB in the Philippines when Mt Taal blew up and killed a couple hundred people.

 

[Original Wally]

I wasn't there for the eruption but years later flew over it and the devastation, mostly trees bent over like toothpicks, was unbelieveable.

Ditto. W*rked for a company in Sacramento and had to fly to Seattle periodically. Our company plane was just a Beechcraft King Air. Pilot did a low and slow over the area (this was about a year later). Was SHOCKED.

 

[mountainsoft]

I was in high school in Woodland Washington (just SW of Mt Saint Helens). I remember watching the first bulging and steam vents on a TV in the library before it actually blew. Over multiple eruptions I remember everything being covered in ash. The police cars all had large air filter contraptions installed on the front bumper of the cars to filter out the dust.

Officials had blocked highway 503 heading east out of Woodland just outside of town. I lived on the Clark county side of the Lewis river and could drive just five minutes up the road from our house to watch the eruptions.

I don't recall if it was the original eruption, or one of the later ones, but we were loading bails of hay onto our pickup truck on a field overlooking the mountain. Neat experience.

Since then we have made multiple trips up to Johnston ridge, and hiking on the east side to Norway pass. VIDEO: Aug 21, 2016 - Hiking to Norway Pass. That said, I haven't been back up to Johnston ridge since the roadway washed out several years ago. As far as I know it is still closed?

 

[thatguy]

We visited the PNW about 1 year after the eruption. There was a observation point set up with some temporary bleachers to sit on. You could still feel the heat radiating from the mountain. I remember the trees laying down like spilled toothpicks on the way up. Went back in 2017. The visitor center was not the same location. Looking at a diorama display and my picture I was able to identify where be must have been. That site was closed due to winter damage. Youtube vidios of the road going there looked like a place I would no longer want to drive, cus I've developed a discomfort for certain mountain roads with unguarded, or minimally guarded drop offs.

 

[jcfradio]

I remember the eruption very well. I was living in Medicine Hat, Alberta at the time , about 1000 km from the volcano. Our US cable TV stations were out of Spokane, WA so we had lots of news about the eruption, before, during and after, I will always remember the TV shots of Yakima at mid day being in almost total darkness due to the ash, It was very surreal. Even 100 km away, we had ash on our cars for several days.

In the late 90's (probably 1998 or so), I took our family and young kids on a vacation and I had to go and see the site. As others have noted, the trees along the road to the mountain were laid down like matchsticks, but even then, you were amazed at how nature was rebounding and just how much greenery was regenerating after less than 20 years.

The Visitor Center was very well done and was one of the best that I have been to. After you watched the film, the curtains were drawn and you were staring into the side of the mountain that had been blown away. A memory that I won't forget.

Do any of the PNW'ers remember Harry Truman? He was an old man (probably in his 80's), who lived near the mountain, I think at Spirit Lake? He refused to leave when the evacuation orders were issued,and was never found, so he is probably still there, buried underneath meters of debris and hot ash.

It's amazing what you remember in detail from your past!

 

[rksparks1]

I was living in Seattle (age 30, easy to figure since I was born in 1950) and we were about to move to Massachusetts, but first going to visit my wife's (at the time) family in Palo Alto, then drive East. Could see the plume which was pretty amazing and, of course, watching all the news and pictures/video.

We had read about the ash, some of which had blown near I-5 around Portland and just south of there, and which was said to be very abrasive and hard on car engines . . . and we'd just bought our first new car, a Honda Accord. So we got an extra air filter and waited until after we got far enough south of Portland and changed it . . . it was pretty dirty already. Didn't have any problems with the car (sold it later after 220,000 miles!).

A friend in Spokane, which got a LOT of ash (it literally turned dark in the middle of the day), had just MOVED their house (too long a story) and it was up on the foundation, but not yet hooked up to water, sewer, etc. You can imagine how long it took to get city services to do the hook-ups, given all they were doing!

Another friend had grown up on a farm in Castle Rock which had part of the property on the Toutle River, which of course had huge runs of downed timber and mud and ash after the eruption. His mom was still on the farm (farmhouse, luckily, far away), but he visited not long after and had pictures of the mess by the Toutle.

Of course, years later I visited the Visitor Center, which was (and probably still is) very impressive. You watched a video presentation, including the dramatic video of the side of the mountain beginning to just slide away and then the massive explosion. At the conclusion of the film, the screen raised, the curtains parted, and you were looking straight out at the side of the mountain that was most affected. Pretty dramatic!

It was certainly a big event in the lives of those who lived around here! As did others, I had a small jar of St. Helen's ash, which disappeared after one of my many moves.

 

[Sconie]

I was out in Seattle when the St. Helen's went off in the spring of 1980 and flew out of SeaTac, back to Minneapolis, a couple of days after the eruption. What I remember was that the traditional east-west airline routes were so saturated with ash that the plane, taking off from SeaTac, flew directly north, far up into British Columbia, then over towards Edmonton, before then gradually descending toward the south and coming into MSP. One helluva distance to travel, but at least they (Northwest Airlines) avoided the ash plume.

 

[audreyh1]

This is probably what they show in the Visitor Center on the big screen. Created from time lapse still photos.

USGS publication with the photos of what happened within a minute! MSH The catastrophic first minute [USGS]