St. Helens springs to life - includes related article

Sunset, May, 1997 by Jim McCausland

Seventeen years after blowing its top, the Cascades' most active peak is revived and visitor-friendly

Geologists knew one thing for sure about Mount St. Helens, even before it erupted on May 18, 1980: it is the youngest active volcano in all of the Cascade Mountains. Most of us, however, were deceived by the mountain's serene profile. Cresting the Cascades like a perfect American Fujiyama, it seemed simply immutable.

Perhaps that's why so many people were caught when the mountain blew up - and why it is so hard, even today, to understand how this pristine, snow-clad peak could have metamorphosed into a smoking crater in just a few minutes.

But that's what happened. The mountain's perfect, 500-year-old shape was destroyed along with 57 people who were just too close.

If Mount St. Helens's destruction was fascinating, its recovery has been nothing less than astonishing. In the eruption that cost the mountain its top 1,313 feet, 200 square miles of surrounding forest were vaporized, blown down, or buried. Yet within three weeks, the first insects and birds were seen just below the crater. Within three years, 90 percent of the plants and animals that had lived in the pre-eruption blast zone had regained at least a toehold there; within 15 years, wild trout were swimming in Spirit Lake.

And though the eruption's mudflows (called lahars), powered by the melt-down of 11 glaciers and lots of snow, scoured a half-dozen major river valleys, these areas are once again supporting fish, trees, mammals, and people. By the eruption's centennial, St. Helens's forests, meadows, and river valleys will be indistinguishable from those that flourished before the blast.

Geologists have been busy, too, documenting everything about the volcano's blast and recovery. You can learn about it all at a passel of visitor centers. The newest one, Johnston Ridge Observatory, opens May 17, and it has a lot to tell. Mount St. Helens was the first Cascades volcano whose eruption was forecast in advance - USGS scientists made the call in 1978 - and it helped volcanologists learn how to forecast eruptions in other Cascades volcanoes (none are likely to blow soon).

St. Helens has also been laced with new roads and trails. You can hover above the crater by helicopter or take an all-day mountain bike trip into the blast zone. When the day is done, head for one of the area's bed-and-breakfasts to recover and plan for the next day.

We guide you up St. Helens from three directions. Each route has a different tale to tell. Each shows how this explosive mountain is returning to life.

the WEST ENTRANCE

Meet St. Helens on visitor center row

If you're making your first trip to Mount St. Helens, the drive approaching the monument from the west is your best bet. Five visitor centers immerse you in the geologic, biologic, and human toll of the 1980 eruption.

Start at the Toutle River Valley, stripped of vegetation by the volcano's most destructive lahar. (The lahar also took out eight bridges and 221 houses.) Today, the Toutle's wide channel meanders among groves of uniform alders - fast-growing trees that transform muddy ash into soil, spiking it with nitrogen to feed the willows and conifers closing in on the river's edges.

Continue east up the mountain and St. Helens's raw power becomes more obvious. At Johnston Ridge, geologist David A. Johnston spent his last minute of life at 8:32 A.M., May 18, 1980. Witnessing the mountain blowing apart and coming at him, he radioed the USGS base, "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"

* Where: Spirit Lake Memorial Hwy. (State 504) runs east from I-5 at exit 49. Continue east through Toutle up the mountain.

* Distance: 104 miles round trip.

DRIVE HIGHLIGHTS

Mount St. Helens Visitor Center. The center, at milepost 5, is the place to plan your trip and buy monument passes (see page 32). Open 9 to 5 daily through April 30, then 9 to 6 through summer; (360) 274-2100.

Hoffstadt Bluffs Visitor Center and helicopter tours. At milepost 27, stop for a bite to eat and admire the biggest wood lodge built in the Cascades since the 1930s. From here, Hillsboro Aviation flies helicopter tours into the crater (prices start around $69 for 20 minutes); (800) 752-8439.

Forest Learning Center. When Mount St. Helens blew, it took more than 4 1/2 billion board feet of timber with it. The center explains the devastation and the subsequent salvage and reforestation efforts. At milepost 33. Open 10 to 6 daily starting May 13; (360) 414-3439. Free. From a nearby knoll, watch huge elk herds graze the Toutle River's floodplain, or hike the center's new 1/2-mile biodiversity trail.

Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center. The collar-shaped set of its new crater caused the Mount St. Helens eruption to blow north across the landscape, killing almost everything it passed over. Exceptions lay dormant in the mud under frozen lakes, burrowed in tunnels beneath meadows, shielded by ridges and rocks, or rooted deep in protected soil. This center, the monument's finest, explores what survived and how. Catch a ranger talk and take a guided interpretive walk on the Winds of Change Trail before you leave. Food, trail maps, and monument passes are sold here. At milepost 43. Open 9 to 5 daily through April 30, then 9 to 6; (360) 274-2131.