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| 2004.10.24 - Drive to St Helens | ||
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With all the activity that was going on at Mt St Helens, you can bet that
I was itching to head out there and see things for myself! FINALLY,
scheduling worked out so that I had some time, and I took it. At 9AM, the fog was lifting, just like the weather guy said... partly cloudy to mostly Sunny... Closing on Toutle, and the famous piles of ash pulled out of the Toutle and Kelso, the weather started turning dreary again... Not exactly a good sign when you're heading into the Cascades... |
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I decided to stop at one of the Welcome Centers -- the first one on WA-503 -- that I hadn't been to for a while, to give the weather time to clear up a bit. | |
| Oddly enough, no matter how many times I go, I see something different. |
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Today, I noticed something that I must have overlooked dozens of
times... a drawing of the 1857 eruption... Compare that with a
Painting made of the same event.
I sort of think they added some more pictures since I was last there... I don't remember this picture of Harry Truman, either... he's the guy who refused to leave his lodge on the banks of Spirit Lake. |
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The pictures really set the chain of events, and show the effects it had
on the locals dealing with something that no one had experience in quite
some time. After leaving the center, the drizzly rain had stopped, but it was still ominously overcast. |
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It wasn't long before the road headed into the foothills... and into the clouds. The low clouds did make for a couple of nice picture opportunities... but the weather really fell apart as I got up into the higher elevations There even was a bit of snow as I got close to the Coldwater Ridge area... |
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Probably due to the weather more than anything else, but the
rivers seemed to have a bit more flow that I've seen in
visits... especially the South Fork of the Toutle, which has
its headwaters in the Crater itself. The two pictures below seem to show more flow... I took the one on the left yesterday... the one on the right I took on Oct 6, 2002, the last time I was there in the fall... its of the same curve in the river, but from different angles... that might be the difference, but it seems that there's far less flow. |
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| The USGS had a display showing the changes and explaining the events that had been happening since September 23, then the Earthquakes started up... |
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I killed as much time as I could, reading, watching the
movie, even grabbing something to eat... but there was no
let up... the clouds kept the Mountain socked in, and I had
to head back, being so close, yet feeling so far. Oh, well... you can bet there'll be a "next time"... and that not much time will go by! Coldwater Ridge was as close as you could get... the Road to Johnston Ridge was closed off... looking ominously like the WA-503 closures from 1980. |
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