unat '04--Day Twelve (At the Foot of Mount Not So Doom)

Tower Rock, WA to Trout Lake, WA
Today's Mileage: appx. 80 mi. Total Mileage: 6,365 mi.
TT: 5 hrs. TTT: 88 hrs.
Quote of the Day: "I keep expecting an Ewok to run out of the ferns"—A. Nichols
News of Note: "Puzzled geologists raced Monday to place...instruments on Mount St. Helens after hundreds of small earthquakes continued for the fifth day—The Oregonian

Was the early-morning rumble Mount St. Helens clearing its throat? Couldn't tell you. As I pay for the site, the caretaker informs me of the rising number of small quakes from the mountain, the first real bit of U.S. news of any kind we've heard in six days. With a little smile from the fates, perhaps we'll see more than the debris of twenty-four years ago. Little do we know what an unnecessary media circus the mountain will become in the coming days.

As you make your way through the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, the scenery goes through a steady progression of changes—as if you were driving through an animitronic diorama at DisneyLand than a National Monument. While the first big view of the mountain comes at Bear Meadow (the spot where the famous time-lapse of the explosion was shot) but the setting is a strong range of coniferous trees and scrub oak with mountain poplar in the washes. The diorama then begins—another set of ridges, (near the Miner's Car site), and it occurs to you that the tops of many of these magnificent trees have been snapped off by something to the west, some massive shockwave. The trees are healthy, big but all have a funny haircut. Pass the next set of ridges to find dead trunks lining the hillsides (but near the ground, tiny spruce and fir (about twenty years old) rise up under the corpses of their parents.

Clearly, each ridge has been slightly protected from those in front of it—the next ridge confirming that we've reached the base of Mt. St. Helens. Following the next switchback, we've reached the surface of the moon. Andy spots a hawk perched atop the blackened remnant of a spruce. While he tries to take a picture, I realize that all the little rocks around me are actually bits of ash: compacted by time and weather into light, little pumacy pebbles the color of chocolate milk. By the time we reach the nearest point to the volcano by road, we've looked down on Spirit Lake, the former home of Mr. Harry Truman's lodge and twenty-four years ago, site of some great fishing, I'm told. Now it is filled with sulfur and a few trees (by "few," I mean "a hundred") still float, leftovers from 18 May, 1980. From the observation point at Windy Ridge, a few hiking trails can run you to the East approach to the crater. We can see about a third of the lave dome (which will grow considerably in the coming days) and could walk out to see the rest, if the trail wasn't closed by the Park Service. Apparently, in these states, Mt. St. Helens has a tendency to lob little hot rocks at the hikers on the trails. Which I'm told is bad.

In the time that we stand there, there will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-150 small earthquakes within the volcano (we won't feel a single one). Presumably, the temblors are the thing that shakes the thin but steady stream of yellowish smoke from the crater. Sorry kids, that's the extent of the drama for us...yellow smoke. Actually, I'm not sorry at all. I stood and looked down at the millions-of-cubic-tons-of-dirt tombstone for 57 people and wasn't a bit jealous of their real estate. Yellow smoke is good enough to me. The first big eruption of ash and steam will come six days later. (Traveler's Note: I'd recommend this drive over the north approach and urge you to get out each step of the way. It'll cost you $6.)

Beyond the travellogue quality of this leg of the trip, however, there's a little something else. As we stand at the overlook, I'm struck with a little of the same sensation I had yesterday in the Seattle Center. The eruption of this mountain was a pretty seminal event in my childhood, the first REAL American natural disaster. To stand here, well, you know...

On to Trout Lake. The drive out of the Gifford Pinchot is actually one of the best of the trip. To call these forests "arboreal" is to fail to do justice to the word. The tunnel-vision nature of the overhanging boughs doesn't change with the daylight (what daylight? These trees have shut it out). Ferns, dampness and a plethora of fungi are everywhere—even growing out of the tarmac on the road. (Note: a few of these roads are pretty much ONE LANE, so take it easy and keep an eye out for logging trucks). There's no questioning the Endorian quality that Andy described. Finally, while the winding drive takes a long time (we're not going very far very fast), we reach Bill's in Trout Lake. We'll spend the night in what use to be a hiking boot repair shop and have a fine dinner in BZ's Corner.