Mount St Helens

The West Side

Mount St. Helens can be seen from the west, south, or east sides. The vast majority of visitors choose to view it from the west side due to it's ease of access. I-5 runs north and south to the west of the area and exit 49 at Castle Rock will let you take highway 504 eastbound into the National Monument. This route passes by a number of visitor centers. At Silver Lake you'll get an introduction that will explain the events of May 1980. As you continue to travel you'll pass by Hoffstadt Bluffs, a private visitor center, as well as the Weyerhaeuser Forest Learning Center. At the end of the road is the Johnson Ridge Visitor Center. This final location offers a large screen movie and a viewing platform that looks into the blast crater of the volcano. It's a 52 mile 1-1/2 hour drive, but well worth it.

Mount St. Helens

This view of Mount St Helens was taken from many miles in the distance and looks over the Touttle River valley. It's hard to imagine the vast scale of things unless you are actually there. Photographs just can't convey the massiveness of this area. When the mountain erupted it initially blew a large hole in the north face of the mountain. Shortly thereafter the top of the mountain blasted upward as dirt and ash rose to heights of 60,000'. As the side of the mountain blasted away, the snow instantaneously melted and combined with the mountain's soil and volcano's heat to create superheated mudflows, called Lahars, that raced down the Touttle River valley, forever changing the landscape.

Helicopter Tours

Hoffstadt Bluffs is a privately run visitor that features the usual food and gift shops. It has a great viewing platform that overlooks the valley and spotting scopes are set up to watch the elk herds that have now returned to the valley. A glass blowing exhibit using Mount St Helens ash is found there but the biggest thrill is the helicopter tour. You can board a Bell Jet Ranger for a smooth flight over the Touttle River valley and a close up look near the edge of the blast crater. Current regulations no longer allow flying into the crater but the views on this flight are simply spectacular.

Touttle River Valley

Leaving Hoffstadt Bluffs, your helicopter flight travels over the Touttle River valley. The snowmelt no longer runs down a neat tidy stream because the 1980 eruption reshaped the valley with massive mudflows. The streams still flow and vegetation has returned to many areas of the valley and pock mark the area with green patches. Elk herds can be seen as the travel between the forested slopes and the water. The trees in this area were planted by Weyerhaeuser over a 12 year project. Each tree was planted by hand and over 1 million trees were planted. If you view the forested slopes across the valley from a visitor center they will appear to have a herring bone pattern because they all grew at the same time.

Touttle River Mudflows

The original river valley is gone. Huge mudflows, or Lahars, from the eruption filled the bed of the Touttle River and rerouted water flow. The spring runoff now flows across wide mudflow beds deposited after the eruption.

Coldwater Lake

Before arriving at Johnson Ridge, there is a visitor center at Coldwater Ridge. The streams there were dammed up by the mudflows of the 1980 eruption, forming Coldwater Lake. A trail in the area will take you to logging equipment that had to be abandoned after it was isolated by these mudflows.

Spirit Lake

Spirit Lake was originally accessed via highway 504. However, the eruption destroyed the last portion of this road. The road was rebuilt and rerouted where necessary but it only goes as far as Johnson Ridge. At Johnson Ridge you can look into Spirit Lake from a distance. The original lake was reformed as the slopes of the mountain slid into it during the eruption. The tidal wave caused by this raced up the opposite slope, stripping it of all trees and depositing them on the surface of the lake. For the next few years Spirit Lake looked more like a log jam than a lake but as many of the trees began to absorb minerals they eventually settled to the bottom.

Blast Crater

The best view of the blast crater is from Johnson Ridge. This location is 6 miles away from the crater but it's as close as you'll get. This view shows the mudflow plains that were formed when the north slope of the mountain slid into the river valley.

Lava Dome

This close-up, taken from Johnson Ridge with a powerful zoom lens, shows the steaming lava dome inside the blast crater. This dome is the result of lava that is steadily pouring from the base of the crater. Steam plumes indicate the vented gasses from within the mountain. This dome has begun growing at a faster rate after a brief resurgence in October of 2004. It's current rate of growth is equivalent to one dump truck load every second. Even at this rate it'll still take many years for the mountain to regain it's original peak.