Thar she blows!

Mt. St. Helens summit, with
Rainier in the distance
(1971)

My buddy Jim B. and I climbed Mt. St. Helens in 1971.  I was in pretty good shape, and it wasn't a particularly difficult climb.  Probably easier -- or at least shorter -- than the climb of Mt. Adams by my brother and me in 1968. 

St. Helens was thus my second climb of a Washington volcano.  Since then, I've climbed Mt. Rainier twice, and Glacier Peak twice.  That leaves only Mt. Baker, which I attempted with a small climbing school group in 1992 -- we had to turn around half way up, because one of our group was having serious health problems.  I'm afraid Baker will have to remain unclimbed.

Sitting on top of St. Helens, water bottle in hand, I didn't realize that I'd never reach this summit again.  At least, a summit at that elevation.  Because nine years later -- forty years ago yesterday -- the mountain famously erupted, reducing the elevation of its peak from 9,677 feet to 8,330 feet.  If it had erupted while I was enjoying my lunch on top, my earthly remains would have been distributed over parts of Idaho and Montana, and even as far away as Oklahoma.

Luckily, I was not at the summit, but at Lihue Airport on Kaua'i, waiting to return to Seattle, when word was passed around the waiting area that St. Helens had blown her top.  I was amazed at the violence of the explosion, but no one was surprised by the eruption itself.  A series of earthquakes had shaken the mountain beginning in March 1980, and a large bulge had been forming on its north side.  The movement of magma inside the cone had been detected.

My home town was (is) twenty miles southwest of St. Helens.  One of the most popular views from our town was the symmetrical, snowy cone in the distance, looming over Lake Sacajawea in the center of town.  Spirit Lake, at the foot of the mountain, was an even more spectacular sight.  Both the Boy Scouts and the YMCA had camps along the lake shore.  There were two lodges at the lake, one of them at the opposite end of the lake from the roadhead.  My family had frequently taken the free ride in a launch to the lodge, for a Sunday chicken dinner. 

Spirit Lake was surrounded by steep hills on all sides, except where the road from I-5 to the west brought in visitors.  A friend and I did a two-night backpacking hike along the mountain ridges, circling the entire  lake in 1967.  It was a beautiful hike, long but not too difficult.  I never dreamed that I'd never do it again.

But so it goes. At 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, all those recreational opportunities, all those scenic views, were suddenly terminated -- as were many square miles of commercial timber owned by giant timber companies.  For years, there had been talk of creating a national park or national monument around St. Helens.  It never happened, but the ruined peak is now enclosed in Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, a 110,000 acre tract devoted to the study of natural regeneration following a volcanic event. I've climbed to what is now the "summit" on the crater's rim two or three times since the eruption.  The approach is now from the south, rather than from Spirit Lake on the north.  What had been a serious (but non-technical) climb is now just a long uphill walk.   

Everyone who spent his youth in or near my home town feels the loss viscerally --  as no doubt Parisians feel the burning of Notre Dame.  Spirit Lake has again been reachable for many years now, of course.  But the configuration of the lake and of the surrounding terrain is so radically different as to be disorienting.  Some people prefer not even to visit, preferring to keep Spirit Lake, with Mt. St. Helens looming gracefully above it -- serenely and perfectly -- embedded in their memories and in their old photographs.

The immutability of the world we live in is a persistent delusion, but a delusion that is frequently proven false.