Mount St. Helens

Mount St. Helens in the spring of 1980. The youngest and most active volcano in the Pacific Northwest, it had erupted for the past 50,000 years and had been especially active for 4,000 years.

Mount St. Helens spewed smoke, soot and ash into the sky in April 1980. The eruption was the volcano's first since 1857, but it was just a burp compared to the cataclysmic explosion that would occur in just a few more weeks. Officials ordered a voluntary evacuation of the surrounding area in preparation for the worst.

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens exploded in violent fury equivalent to 500 times the force of the Hiroshima nuclear blast. The eruption sent volcanic ash 15 miles into the air and blasted furnace winds northward at 600 miles per hour. In seconds, thousands of acres of old-growth forest were scorched and leveled. Trees were blown down like toothpicks.

The entire summit and much of Mount St. Helens' north flank crumbled in a huge landslide, triggering massive explosions that ripped through the sliding debris and wiped out 230 square miles of forests and wildlife. In the eruption, 57 people died and tens of thousands of native deer, wild goats, elk and fish were killed.

Super-heated ash and rocks falling across the snow-covered hills and mountains triggered massive mudslides that swept away trees, earth and anything else in their paths. The icy clear Toutle River - its temperature having risen to more than 80 degrees - erupted into a muddy torrent of logs and debris that ripped through cars, bridges and people.

A logger dashed along the trunk of a giant Douglas fir felled during the eruption. Spikes of trees, called "the standing dead" by loggers, lined the horizon, their branches stripped. Most of the timber in the area, about 14 miles from the volcano, was cooked by the super-heated wind that followed the massive eruption.

More than 15 years after Mount St. Helens blew its top, a government hydrologist hiked through the Toutle River basin near the volcano. Filled with mudflow mounds from the eruption, new vegetation began to grow there only a few years after the eruption. Seeds blown by wind or carried by animals germinated and began sprouting green life in the barren area.

Mount St. Helens, in the distant background, is seen as it appeared nearly 20 years after the 1980 eruption. Much of the forest surrounding the mountain received heavy damage from the fallout of heated ash and rocks. These areas recovered quickly, but it will be centuries before areas north of the mountain can fully support large stands of trees.

One of southwest Washington's most popular tourist attractions, the Mount St. Helens crater and Clearwater Lake were formed after the mountain's eruption. From one of three visitors' centers east of Toutle, sightseers could observe the return of wildlife and the amazing regrowth of plants on what once looked like a lunar landscape.

Ven Somthanin Grongthong, a Buddhist monk from Thailand, hikes along the Hummocks Trail in the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Scientists sought to protect the area from visitors. But as nature continued its rapid recovery there, tourism boosters were pushing for more access.

In 2000, blown-down trees, still pointing away from the blast where they had fallen 20 years before, framed the north side of Mount St. Helens at Loowit Viewpoint. Once a thriving forest, the mountain's north slope and nearby hills still showed the effects of the devastating pyroclastic blast. But only a year after the eruption, a single lupine plant was found sprouting.

Near Mount St. Helens in the year 2000, Richard Smith trimmed a Noble fir bough for Christmas wreaths. The 1980 eruption was particularly damaging to the logging industry. With losses estimated at $200 million, President Jimmy Carter declared the state a major disaster area. But by 2000, a young forest of Douglas firs, Noble firs and hemlock again produced income for people and forage for elk.

Indian paint brush returned with its bright red colors.

Click here for photos of new activity at Mount St. Helens' in 2004.