Saint Helens

Saturday, we went to Washington (the state) and visited mount Saint Helens, an active volcano. It was really impressive. St Helens had a major eruption in may 1980, when a bulge on the North site of the mountain exploded and blow out a mixture of steam, ash, dust and lava in a horizontal direction (in stead of the more general vertical eruption) with 300 mph and at 320 kmph destroying everything in a 230 square mile area. This blast lasted an hour and had a force comparable to 27000 atomic bombs like used in Hirosjima. With this the top 1300 feet of the mountain slided downand glaciers were melting for 75%. This caused the largest landslide in recorded history and a devastating mud stream which buried pieces of the valley in as much as 600 feet of mountain leftovers and filled the rivers with mud and trees. 57 people died as a result of the eruption and the ash cloud darkened two states. Ash was found all over the United States. In the last 20 years vegetation has worked on a comeback, but there's still a huge area of dusty ground without vegetation and a lot of trees are still just laying there pointing away from the mountain as silent witnesses of the '80 blast. Last year geologist recorder some earthquakes under St. Helens and since than the volcano has been smoking andshe's steadily growing. When we were there we could see the little pointers record some movement and actually today (one day after we haven been there) they have measured an earthquake under the mountain again. No one knows if and when st. Helens is going to erupt again, but it sure is an impressive area to walk around... For more pictures you can click here...