We checked out of our little log cabin this morning and headed for the National Volcanic Monument of Mount St Helens.
Initially the countryside was heavily wooded with (planted) Douglas Firs. This is tree farm country.
On the roads, large lumber trucks were trundling along to the huge sawmills in the valleys..
We stopped to look at the occasional lake and view..
At lunch time we were on the road leading to Mount St Helens but we were still many miles away. The view from the restaurant into the river valley though, made it clear how far the impact of the volcano had spread. The wide river bed is full of volcanic ash, even 36 years on from the eruption.
A helicopter was taking visitors up for sightseeing tours of the crater. We opted to continue driving..
When Mount St Helens first came into view it was shrouded in low cloud and so it was impossible to see the huge crater where the top of the mountain once was.
We were lucky that the clouds started to lift while we were at the Johnston Ridge Observatory, from where we walked along a high trail which had a good view of the crater and of the desolation of the surrounding landscape, scoured by the huge eruption and outpouring of volcanic ash.
Where ancient trees once stood there are just stumps.
The hilltops are rounded hummocks of volcanic material and the wild flowers and trees are just beginning to grow back in the sparse, gritty soil.
As the cloud lifted we could see more of the mountain and the volcanic landscape below the summit..
An extraordinary and peaceful sight now, in contrast to the massive devastation caused in just a few moments on the morning of 18th May 1980, when the mountain cracked open and sent huge pieces of itself roaring down the valley to a distance of 14 miles from the summit, filling the skies for hundreds of miles with ash and debris and changing its own profile forever.
This last photo shows the view of the mountain out of the window of the Observatory and, propped in front of the window, a photo of the summit before the eruption.
