1980, Mt. St. Helen, New Lakes, Trees and Vegetation

We arrived at Harmony Lakeside RV park on Wednesday July 12, 2017. It is a great park and we have a big lot on the end of the driveway. I will post a photo later. We traveled to Mt St. Helen on July 13, 2017 to view the mountain and the volcano eruption. What were you doing on May 18, 1980 at 8:32 AM. That is when the volcano erupted and blew the whole side of the mountain off. The volcano had been active for several weeks and on the toward the last day they started seeing it grow 5 feet a day until it came apart and tore trees and everything else in its path down. Bridges were lost and the roads were impassable for a while. People working as scientist on the activity of the volcano lost their lives because no one gave them warning that the volcano was about to erupt. It has been 30 years since this volcano erupted and the only thing that gave it away is the crater on the side of the mountain. Everything else has replaced itself and there were two new lakes formed because of the eruption of the volcano. The photos that you will see is of Coldwater Lake which was one of the new lakes formed. Other lakes that were present before the blast were either covered in sut or they had to be dug out by the Core of Engineers. The streams cleaned themselves because of the microcosms in the water help clean everything and the water is as clear as ever. The Forest Service planted 10,000 seeds but it did not work. The plant and animal droppings did the job. You can not tell by looking at the landscape that anything was burned or run over by the lava.

This is a bank mostly of rocks and lava dust but there is a river running throught it which is hard to see. This is some of the area where the lava flowed.