1981, February. Flying around Mt. St Helen's

The pilot was Bob Anderson, he was the Director of the Mt. Hood CC Planetarium, pilot and he was a friend. I first met Bob in 1969 when I attended a graduate level planetarium management course at the SUNY, Oswego in New York. He was one of the instructors and the first person to welcome me to the Pacific Northwest!

St Helens also known as 'lawilátɬa ', or 'one from whom smoke comes'. is about 45 miles north of the Portland/Vancouver Area. We flew over the south rim of the volcano,, and beneath us we saw the growing, steaming and glowing lava dome. The stereo pair gives you a better impression of what we saw. Steam and fumes rising from the dome. If you Stare at the center between the two photos, cross your eyes and merge the photos. It won't hurt your eyes, it's good exercise! The stereo View is really impressive on a large monitor.

Further north we could see Spirit Lake, and on the horizon 45 miles away was another volcano, Mt Rainier, also known as Tahoma.

Billions of tons of debris slid into the lake, pushed the water up the surrounding slopes snapping the Douglas Firs like they were tooth picks. The water sloshed back down the hills carrying with it the broken and stripped trees. The bottom of the lake was raised about 400 feet higher by the land slide. The eruption and lahar buried Harry Truman's Lodge and volcanologist David A. Johnston and his camp.

A lahar is a violent type of mudflow or debris flow composed of a slurry of pyroclastic material, rocky debris and water. The St Helen's lahar flowed down from the volcano, into the Toutle river valley. The debris flowed all the way Down the Toutle River, into the Cowlitz river and out to the Columbia River where debris blocked freighter ship traffic.

We flew fairly low over Spirit Lake, on a frozen strip of the lake we spotted an airplane on the ice. The landscape was surreal, it looked like we were on another planet.

Volcano St Helen's Pages

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Bob Anderson, pilot, friend and collegue.
  • Bob Pointing the way ts St. Helen's
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Approaching from the south, Portland/Vancouver is 45 miles from the volcano.
  • Apporaching from the south
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Peering over the rim at Spirit Lake and Mt Rainier, also known as Tahoma.
  • at the rim
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In the caldera is a growing and glowing dome pushed up by the magma under neath.
  • Over the Dome-1
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A stereo pair! The Caldera's Growing steaming dome, stare at center, Cross eyes!
  • StereoPair-overthedome
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A perspective view showing the size of the dome in the caldera. The dome will eventually fill the caldera.
  • View from the othersidetiff
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The debris from the 26 megagton Explosion pushed the water out of the lake. When the water rushed back down it took most of the tree trunks with it filling up the lake bottom is now 400 ft higher
  • Spirit Lake
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The force of the explosion left nothing standing. Douglas Fir trees were snapped like twigs
  • Blow Down
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In this view we are about 5 miles from the Caldera
  • Over ViewSpirit lake and volvano
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The lahar flow filled up lthe lake and spilled into the Toutle River Valley covering Truman's Lodge and volcanologist David A. Johnston and his camp in 400 feet of slurry
  • The Lahar
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Gas bubbled up from the Magma below making litttle caldera i the muck.
  • Logs and mud)
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Can you spot it? An airplane landed on the ice at the edge of Spirit Lake!
  • Airplane on ice
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Destruction was litterly out of the world.
  • Another planet
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3.3 billion tons of destruction flowed down from the volcano
  • Lahar #2
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the 1980 eruption destroyed more than 200 homes and over 185 miles (300 kilometers) of roads.
  • Lahar #3
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Mount St. Helens 'lawilátɬa ', or 'one from whom smoke comes'. The view you would see from The Johnston Observatory
  • Volcano St Helene's