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| 2005.10.10 - Mt St Helens - Windy Ridge | ||||||||
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On the way back from a trip to help out at the Portland Marathon, we
decided to take a detour and head out The Mountain. Since I had
never been to Windy Ridge, we decided to go that way. I've been to Mt St Helens MANY times, but I've always gone "the other" way, to Johnston's Ridge. This was going to be a rare opportunity to do something completely different a place I've been to many times. The drive was nice, rain here and there, but not bad. We even stopped at an "Eat" place... "Huff and Puff", a little greasy spoon... They sure had GREAT hamburgers!!! Either that, or I was pretty hungry! |
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After stopping, we took a leg of a fork that went to Windy Ridge. It
was "the road less traveled" --
We entered the Gifford Pinchot National Forest without another soul on the
road.
The drive was VERY nice... fall colors, excellent views, and a country road... it was pretty relaxing. |
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Our first good view of The Mountain came when we stopped at the Bear Meadow Overlook, which is where the famous
"Landslide Sequence" pictures were taken, which still provides the source for the
sequence of events at the first few moments in the fateful eruption.
What a view that must have been! |
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St Helens disappears in the clouds behind trees scorched to death at the
edge of the blow down from the 1980 blast. Every living thing closer,
including the bacteria in the ground, was burned sterile by the intense
heat of the blast.
There's evidence of other "scorch lines" around the Mountain, dating to a blast in the 1800's, and another in the 1400's... |
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It was eerie driving through these stands, and then, as we got closer, along the slopes
littered with fallen trees... where once was endless forest, a field of
high-mountain bushes now display a vibrant fall color... In the 25 years since the blast, there's been significant regrowth. |
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Bark from the dead trunks can be seen all over the place, fallen away from
the dead and rotten wood it once grew from. In a few places, it
still was stuck to the trees. Light grey logs seemed to be lying everywhere... its a view you can ONLY see at St Helens. |
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the slopes above Spirit Lake still show the damage they received when all
of the water from the lake was sloshed out by the force of the blast. When the water flowed back in, the logs blown over and broken by the explosion were pulled into the lake, forming the "mother of all Log Jams |
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| The lake, once rimmed with pristine old growth, now lies in a bed that is some 200 feet higher than it was before the blast. |
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The Sheer volume of logs floating in the lake is AMAZING! In some areas, the shore line can be made out, by the thicker pile of logs. Its a pretty odd site, actually... |
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The views of the mountain are amazing as you get closer to the ridge. From this vantage point, you have sort of a side view, and the Sugar Bowl sort of blocks your view of the activity, but you can see the smoke and the heat being released by the current dome building event. |
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At Windy Ridge, there's a small gazebo, which was being worked on when we
were there. I guess they're replacing or remodeling the bathrooms. From the parking lot, there's more than 250 steps to be traversed to the top, where the view is even more spectacular, and absolutely worth the climb! |
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Some days, like the day we were there, The Mountain creates its own weather, belching steam, heat, and ash into the clouds above, saturating them, and providing the catalyst for rain, or worse. | |||||||
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We started running out of time, and had to return far too early to really
let it all sink in. We'll be back this way again. We didn't stop at half the stops we could have, but we still had a great time exploring a "new" section of the Mountain. |
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