The Great Pacific Northwest

Well, we've done it. We finally went on a trip to the Great Pacific Northwest. Long talked about, and finally consummated. We flew into Portland and drove up through Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria over on Vancouver Island, and back to Port Angeles in Washington state where we visited the Olympic National Park. Then, it was back to Portland by way of Olympia, the capital of Washington state. All in all, it was a great trip. We had tons of fun and loads of photos. In the interest of time, I'm only going to post a few photos from each day of the trip to accompany my travelogue.

Day 1
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Mount St. Helens was amazing. It has been 28 years since the eruption of 1980, but the surrounding landscape still bears clear evidence of the devastation that occurred. Here's a brief description of the eruption on the U.S. Forest Service webpage:

"At 8:32 Sunday morning, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted.

Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. Nearly 230 square miles of forest was blown down or buried beneath volcanic deposits. At the same time a mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments".

Intrigued?

Background information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens

More information for aspiring volcanologists:
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Publications/PP1250/table_contents.html

The first visitor's center at Silver Lake afforded grand views of the mountain, still snow-capped in late June. We walked on a trail skirting Silver Lake and admired the profusion of wildflowers and water lilies. Lots of wild foxgloves. To the south of Silver Lake lay the vast Pumice Plain. Looming in the east, the mountain.
Incidentally, Silver Lake, like many of the other lakes in the area, was formed about 2500 years ago by lahar flowing from the mountain and damming up the valley.

Further along the Spirit Lake Highway and much closer to the mountain, we hiked on the Ridge trail from Loowit Point to Johnston Observatory on the slope facing the northside of the mountain with the best view of the crater and lava dome. The terrain consisted of loose scree which made it a little treacherous on the narrow trail.


We saw some fallen logs, some buried under the ground, and lots of tree stumps.



The mudflow formed by the collapse of the northern flank dropped down into the valley below, and bounced back up over Johnston Ridge. Later on, the same area was hit by the full force of the pyroclastic flow. Only tree stumps remain - the old-growth forest was ripped out by the blast like twigs, and joined the pyroclastic flow like huge burning missiles in a tsunami of hot gas and rock (known as tephra), seething at 1000 degrees Celsius and moving at over 100 miles per hour.

Phew! Suffice to say, it was an awe-inspiring experience to contemplate the power unleashed, and scale of the devastation even 28 years after the event.

After taking all this in, we ended the day at Coldwater Lake, a cool oasis of peace all to ourselves, with views of Mt St Helens and the Cascades. The lake was strewn with large logs, deposited from miles away into the lake. Hummocks, parts of the mountain that stayed intact in the mudflow-avalanche, lay as grey humps with long shadows across the landscape. We watched a blue bird dip into the clear water, falling into the reflection of mountains and clouds in the golden evening light.



To end a beautiful day a little inappropriately, we then checked into the Motel6 in Kelso, Washington. Good night!