The campground in Castle Rock was a good place and our site was quite a narrow back-in with a lovely view. The weather gave us another great chance to catch up on schoolwork, even though it was a Sunday. Frankly, without the calendar on our clock we wouldn’t really know what day of the week it was and it doesn’t really matter. We travel when we’re ready and do as much schoolwork as we can both in the Chev and in the Sierra. The girls are a little behind, but not too much and thankfully have now fallen in to a routine of sorts.
Castle Rock is about 50 miles (80k) from Johnston Ridge Observatory, the best vantage point from which to see Mt St Helens. There’s a tourist information centre both at the observatory and at the beginning of the national park and each of them have a different exhibition, the former about the environment and the latter focuses on the mountain, eruption and volcanoes generally.
Monday brought lighter rain with a few breaks between, so we decided to drive to the nearest information centre to see what they had on display. As we drove there the sun came out and although the weather looked promising, we wondered whether or not we should try to get to the top as it was about 2.30 – perhaps there wasn’t time.
We paid our entrance fee and as we were still at the reception cashier, discussed with her our desire to see the top. She advised us to go straight there now, as they had had snow both on Mt St Helens and the road to get to the observatory last night, they were expecting a lot more tonight and during the day tomorrow. She returned our entrance fee and although I hadn’t brought my camera, Grace had hers and we were suitably dressed.
The road to the observatory winds and twists and although the height at the observation point is at 4,200 feet, we started going downhill for a way at the 3,000’ mark making us think twice about whether we’d taken an incorrect turn. After a couple of miles and a drop of several hundred feet, the road started up again so we persevered.
We could see plenty of snow ahead, but still couldn’t see Mt St Helens – the low cloud cover sure didn’t help either. Neither Rochelle nor Chantelle had seen “natural” snow before (we’ve been to Perisher where the girls saw the snow makers spraying the fine mist in the air to make snow) and they were excitedly chatting about their chance to see “real” snow and kept asking if what we were seeing was the real thing!
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| Mt St Helens... in the distance, somewhere |
Our arrival at the observatory was great. The girls wanted to run and jump in the snow and luckily, Meryla had brought her gloves. Chantelle pulled her long sleeves down to make gloves and poor Rochelle had to make do with bare hands. We walked to the building and almost as we arrived, it started snowing. Extra excitement as photos were taken of the girls trying to catch snowflakes in their mouth. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a decent view or photograph of the Mt St Helens due to the cloud cover, but knew it was there and attempted a few token shots.
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| Flattened trees from the eruption and barren lands remain |
It’s hard to believe that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the eruption. Signs of the mountain’s activity had been occurring since March that year when earthquakes measuring up to 4.1 shook the area and periodic bursts of steam and ash plumed from its crater. Weeks before the eruption the plumes ceased, but a bulge on the north face of the mountain was growing as much as 5 feet/day providing ominous signs of what was about to happen.
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| Note the mudflows in the foreground |
On the morning of the eruption a magnitude 5.1 earthquake shook Mt St Helens. At 8.32am on May 18th, 1980 the massive eruption took place and the north face of the mountain, already weakened and bulging from the pressure of the magma pushing upward gave way. Freed of the weight of the mountain containing it, the gases and magma burst out like champagne from a shaken bottle.
The avalanche travelled approximately 24 kilometres downstream at a velocity exceeding 240 km/hr and left behind a deposit with an average thickness of 45 metres; at some places it was 180 metres thick! The heat and blast from the eruption travelled at an estimated 320 km/hr ripping over 10 million trees out of the ground like toothpicks and where the blast hadn’t torn the trees from the ground, the side of the tree facing the mountain was completely burnt.
We stayed till almost 5 o’clock and although the centre stayed open another hour, I felt it prudent to return back down as some of the sections of road were quite steep and windy and I didn’t want to take the chance of getting caught in black ice. The outside ambient temperature displayed by the Chev was reading 33°F so caution was the word as the roads were quite wet on the way up. 
I drove very cautiously under Grace’s scrutiny and all went well. On our way home we stopped at Coldwater Lake which Rochelle and I explored for about 20 minutes – in fact we were so long the others, who waited not-so-patiently in the car thought we might have been lost. Following the eruption, the lake had been “re-located” 800 feet higher up the mountain due to all the sediment, fallen trees and ash that covered the area. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant very close to the campground and had a great dinner – it certainly helped us warm up.
That night they received a fall of over 8” on Mt St Helens and during the day on Tuesday, they were expecting another 7”. It rained all day at the campground and we were told by the staff that it was snowing at the observatory again. We didn’t take the opportunity to visit the lower observatory again and concentrated on schooling that day.
We woke on Wednesday to quite a heavy fog but were told that would burn off shortly and should be a lovely day. Sure enough, as we were preparing the rig to leave, the fog broke and by the time we were on the road towards Cannon Beach, it was a turning out to be a glorious day.
Our disastrous trip to Cannon Beach, located on Highway 101 is the next blog.
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