Mt. St. Helens

On Saturday, Andrew and I planned to go on a hike. Then he suggested we go to Mt. St. Helens, and I reminded him it was a three hour drive away. We quickly decided, "What the heck?" and got sandwiches, snacks, and water ready. I think our mantra for living in Washington is "We don't have kids so we can do random things." For example, moving on about a week's notice, or hiking 12 miles when you meant to do only four. Our Mt. St. Helens trip is another of those examples.

These volcanoes out here are big, and you can see them from far away. Above is one of our first views of Mt. St. Helens. People in Washington keep telling us that Utah doesn't have mountains like they do, which is somewhat true. Andrew keeps saying that their mountains just look bigger than ours cuz their bases are near sea level, while our are way up high already.

Maybe we have a defensive pride in mountains, I don't know.

Mt. St. Helens is surrounded by lovely replanted forests, except for near the blast zone where everything is desolate.

The magical rainbow cloud. It was very cool, and I have never seen a rainbow cloud.

My head and Mt. St. Helens at the halfway point of our hike. Unfortunately, you cannot hike on the active volcano.

This is the sort of landscape that surrounded Mt. St. Helens. There were ravines and canyons in the ash. It was really eerie.

A lovely algae-filled blue lake in the piles of ash.

It was steaming! Exciting! But we didn't get exploded, obviously, as I am here to blog about it.

There were a lot of waterfalls in the mountains around us. Even these mountains nearby were extremely desolate and had almost no regrowth since the 30 years since the explosive eruption.

All the tree logs were flat against the ground, all going in the same direction.


The end of the trail.

Spirit Lake, right next to Mt. St. Helens, is half full of logs that just float. It added to the eeriness of the landscape.

Andrew and I and Mt. St. Helens.

It was a fun trip and we had a great hike. It wasn't the most beautiful area to hike in, but it was unusual and interesting. I'm glad we drove for a grand total of six hours to hike for five. I think it was worth it.