Mt. St. Helens blew and then kept erupting 42 years ago.
I saw MASSIVE lightning bolts shooting through the black clouds as it was going off several times and I still remember it vividly to this day.
It’s freaking impressive.
If You Ever See This In Person You Will Never Forget It
I was stationed on a submarine going through a yard period in Bummertown when it happened. The ash was 4 inches deep at our barracks. A lot of cars died soon afterwards ingesting that stuff…
I lived in south west Vancouver (the slums by the rail road tracks) when it blew. We could see just the top one day and it was gone the next. We only got ash dumped on us (seriously) twice, as I recall.
There’s some stories I could tell.
I started out helping build the fire camp the Forest Service setup just out of Trout Lake and after my military background was discovered got recruited to be a comms teck for the camp. We had crews suppressing hot spots in the red zone. Flew over, in and around St. Helens in a helicopter as we set up radio repeater sites.
The camp was set up in the bottom of a valley so we had to run a hard line up the mountains to where we could get a transmitter set up to hit the repeaters. One of the lines was five miles long, the other was seven miles long. We put those lines in by packing quarter mile rolls of wire on our backs. I was given a couple of guys from a helitack crew to help get the wire in so it was laid down three quarters of a mile at a time. Hike in laying wire. Hike out three quarters of a mile. Hike in three quarters of a mile, lay another three quarters of a mile of wire, hike out a mile and a half, hike back in a mile and half, … well you get the idea it was a lot of hiking and if I recall correctly each spool of wire weighed 68lbs. Then about every three or four days the elk would get tangled up in the wire and break it then you would have to hike the line route until you found the break and make repairs.
I remember heavy particulates settling on our food as we ate during one of the eruptions. Another time we were just northeast of the crater opening, flying back from setting up a site on Mt. Margaret, when the mountain went KFB. That was an exciting flight. Another time we were out and the entire region became socked in by fog. Landing at our impromptu airfield, a hayfield, with a minimal control tower and several other birds sitting on the ground was interesting I guess you could say.
Fog got us another time too, we were on some really steep and small diameter no name knob setting up a site and suddenly rotor wash started blowing us around and kicking up dirt and dust like mad. We thought the pilot was jerking our string and cussed him out over the commset. He told just hurry up and get done. Turns out that if we lost visibility to the sky and ground we had to stay grounded where we were until conditions improved. Well he was using the rotor wash to blow the fog down the knob and keep a small circle of blue sky visible above us so he could take off. We got done, climbed aboard and seconds after we lifted off he radioed the tower to tell them we had just gone zero, zero for visibility and were returning IFR.
We would whistle up a bird, get lunches from the catering shack, invite a couple of lunch crew gir… I better not tell this one, it might ruffle some feathers even after all this time.
Packing radio boxes in the red zone the ground was so hot the soles of your boots would start to melt. I think I went through several pairs of boots while working up there.
Ahh, there’s ton’s more, lots of hard work and good times.
wes
wtdb
In the second paragraph that should read comms tech, guess I should learn to proofread
wes
wtdb
I had just driven to Spokane the day before Helen blew. Glad I hadn’t waited a day. What a mess. Dealing with the ash was problematic. What was weird was the ash cloud rolling in, darkness at midday and the street lights coming on. I could imagine what animals thought when volcanoes blew in eons before.
I still have TWO larger Gerber baby food jars that have never been opened since I scooped the powder in to them on May 18th. It’s weird stuff, practically pure silicate.
I didn’t drive my two ’57 chebbies for two weeks after the fall, and when I did I had oil-soaked foam that I had wrapped around the air filter intakes. I ran my 3-wheel mail truck everywhere, it had a commercial grade canister air cleaner that I could blow out to clear it once per day. Never had a bit of problems with my engines.
Did you know that if you add one part Mt St. Helens ash to 4 parts concrete mix, you get a helluva strong concrete? Wish I had access to more, but I used all I could find when doing concrete work (forms, sidewalks, etc.). Made good mortar mix additive, too!
I did not know about St Helen’s ash in concrete, makes sense though. I know a lot of artist used it in pottery and would make interesting colors and patterns on their works. I wonder how much ash made it into the Spokane river and swept down into the Columbia?
I missed the actual eruption, but I got my pilots license out of Pearson Airpark in 1974, and I recall that it was a very pretty mountain, along with Adams, Ranier, and Hood.
And wes, you may or may not recall my wife’s uncle, a Paul Stenkamp, was a Forest Service head honcho for that area at the time.
Greg,
The name is slightly familiar but I have to be honest that was a lot of years ago and I didn’t have much to do with the forest headquarters at Trout Lake, virtually all of my time was spent at the fire camp or out in the woods.
If he was out at the fire camp I most likely met him as it seemed like everyone dropped by the comms tent.
Now this has me trying to remember names of folks that were there. The only one off the top of my head was Leapin and that was his nickname. He was a copter crewchief I believe. Huh, I can remember the call sign of the bird was 56 November and it was a Bell Longranger II. The shit that sticks in your mind.
wes
wtdb
Global picture of the future.
Wasn’t there for the eruption, but have been there several times over the years since. The destruction is just mind boggling. The slowness of the land recovering was sad to see.
Step-son no longer lives in Vancouver, WA, so not likely to ever get back that way again.
I was working on the Hanford Reservation when it blew. No one notified us what was happening. Within an hour all kinds of ash was falling down on us. Blowing dust around the TriCities for months afterwards.
Was riding with my mom and sister down highway 224 in Milwaukie when it was announced on the radio.
We used to be able to see the mountain from our house in Estacada. Not after that.
I can’t wait until D.C. looks like that.