Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!

In late March, 1980, Mt St Helens experienced a small earthquake, and steam started venting from the top.  By the end of April, the north side of the mountain began to bulge.  It kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and all the local folks were starting to get annoyed that they couldn't go to their cabins, and that certain roads were closed, because it seemed like nothing was going to happen, until May 18th, 1980, when a 5.1 magnitude earthquake happened, triggering the collapse of the north face of the mountain, which you see here, resulting in the largest landslide in recorded human history.  Chunks of super heated mountain mixed with ice and snow, creating mudflows that roared down the mountain, filling the valley, leveling trees, killing people and animals, and destroying bridges and lumber camps.  After the collapse, a lateral explosion of ash erupted, sending ash out as far as Missoula, Montana, where the skies were so dark, they had to use streetlights and headlights during the day.  People thought the Soviets had attacked, but in reality, it was just the deadliest volcanic event in the history of the US, with a 230 sq mile blast zone.

We went up to 4200 feet here at Johnston Ridge, which directly faces the crater.  Mt St Helen's was pretty chill today, but evidence of her destructive past was etched into the hillsides, and evident in the old forest trees which were blasted from their stumps.  Parts of the mountain, now called hummocks, litter the valley.  I went up to the top of the observatory, and when I came back down, Lizzie was listening to a lecture by a forest ranger, who began his spiel by shooting a chipmunk in the face with a green squirt gun he kept just for that purpose.  The chipmunks here are very large, squirrel sized, and aggressive, and will have their revenge.

As mentioned, 57 people were killed in the eruption, including 83 year old Harry Truman (not the ex president, another Harry Truman) who had stubbornly refused to evacuate, as well as volcanologist, David Johnston, who was stationed at this ridge, now named for him, observing the mountain for his assistant, who was away at a conference.  The 30 year old Johnston radioed in "Vancouver! Vancouver!  This is it!" before getting hit with chunks of steaming mountain, and neither his, nor Truman's bodies were ever found.

Lizzie and I watched a 15 minute movie, which was a super spooky and kind of depressing story of the eruption, which began with Johnston's last words.  (Okay his last raidoed words.  The poor man's actually last words were probably more along the lines of "FUuuuuUUuuuccckkk!")  There was a baby in the theater, and whenever they would run the camera with pyroclastic flow noises and perspective, the baby would start crying.  They really loved the pyroclastic flow angle, with overwrought music, and Lizzie and I were like 'WHO MADE THIS?" and it was a production company out of Boston.  Go figure.  THE EARTH IS A LIVING PLANET.  A LIVING PLANET WHO SOMETIMES GETS MAD AS FUCK AND BLOWS ITSELF UP.  Mt St Helens was active again in 2004-2008, but the eruptions were small in scale, mostly venting steam and enlarging the lava dome, and pushing up long shafts (heh heh) of solidified magma referred to as "whalebacks" by the scientist on one of the interactive screens activated by a button I mashed like a 4 year old.  GIVE ME MORE INFORMATION.  PUT IT IN MY BRAIN.