The scene around Mount St. Helens, which still shows the river filled with mudflow, even after 24 years.








Okay, so this is not Geraldo, but I would have been shooting directly into the sun to snap his picture. The mountain was spewing steam at this moment, and officials as well as national news networks were anxiously watching the activity on the mountain.


Mount St. Helen’s Volcano

Right now a volcano in Alaska is threatening to erupt, and who knows when it will or what damage it might do to the surrounding area and the environment. However, we only have to look at Mt. St. Helens in Washington State to see the type of destruction that can happen.

We visited St. Helens a few years after its devastating blast in 1980, when more than 200 square miles of Douglas Fir forests disappeared beneath mud, and trees lay fallen where they had stood. The scene was beyond eerie.

In 2004, we once again visited the mountain to see if anything had changed. It still looks otherworldly, like a scene straight off the Moon’s surface. But now there are signs of regeneration on surrounding hills and mountains. Trees are sprouting, and manmade visitor centers and overlooks have popped up on nearby viewing sites. But even today, not all is safe or perfect there.

On the day we went, the mountain was threatening to erupt once again. It continuously puffed steam and the ground trembled, even as thousands of visitors, including us, drove up to get a close-up view of the action. Dozens of national network news vans with satellites on top were there filming the activity. We got out and wandered around Johnston Ridge, an observatory and visitor center named for the young volcanologist who lost his life reporting on the pending eruption back in 1980. In all, 57 people lost their lives on that picture-perfect spring day that quickly turned into night when ash and terror filled the skies.

I know some of you must wonder why we would go see the mountain while the seismometer was registering heavy earthquake activity. We were staying nearby in an RV resort and figured we were goners if it erupted, whether we remained there or went up on the mountain. The activity did hasten our departure from the area, though.

At Johnston Ridge, we watched the seismometer bounce up and down to the rhythm of the mountain’s burps, and then headed into the theater to view the horrifying big screen movie of the eruption in 1980. As the curtains parted following the movie to reveal a stunning view of what remains of Mount St. Helens, newscaster Geraldo Rivera walked by.

Mount St. Helens is an easy drive east of I-5, between Portland and Seattle, and is a fascinating site to visit since you can look directly into the north flank of the mountain, much of which disappeared during the volcanic blast. In the United States, there is no volcano site other than Hawaii that reveals the process of regeneration that can be observed there. Visit the Web site at: http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/mshnvm/