Coming from the Olympic peninsula, we stayed a couple nights at a rustic campground in the Seaquest state park. About an hour away is Mt. St. Helens, the vulcano that erupted spectacularly in May 1980. In spite of many warning signs as early as March of the same year, the unexpected lateral blast of the eruption took the lives of 57 people and devastated a large area around the vulcano. Triggered by a massive landslide, the eruption blasted away the entire top and the northwestern side of the mountain, taking away over 1,300 ft of the original height.
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| Mt. St. Helens erupted sideways, blasting a huge gap into the mountain slope. The haze in this and the following photos is caused by wildfires in eastern Washington and Oregon |
Prior to the eruption, Mt. St. Helens looked like all the other vulcanoes of the Cascade range, like for instance this one:
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| Mt. Hood in northwest Oregon |
Even 32 years after the eruption, the devastating results of the blast are plain to see.
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| Distance: 5 mi. The lake and the forest that have been here before the eruption, were buried under lava, and vegetatiuon did not recover yet. |
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| Distance: 8 mi. Forests were flattened, and nothing survived |
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| Distance: 15 mi. |
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