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The Road to Mt. St. Helens
Posted 11/11/04 - 1:30 PM
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I was barely a year old when the local volcano erupted. There was speculation for weeks leading up to the event. My parents were driving down Interstate 5 one Sunday afternoon. As they entered a turn in the Terwilliger curves in their old Toyota, my mother spotted the 12 mile tall mushroom cloud crawling out of the peak. They switched the radio dial to 1190 AM to confirm what their eyes were telling them. In the backseat I was no doubt more interested in seeing how many fingers and toes I could fit in my mouth.
On May 18th, 1980 Mt. St. Helens blew its top. After 5.1 earthquake, the north face of the mountain collapsed. In the nine hours that followed, Debris drifted over eastern Washington and points south. A few days later, my father would use a small shovel to remove ash from the gutters of our tiny house in Portland. In Yakima, my great grandmother called to say that her neighbors would clearing their walks with snow shovels.
Twenty-four years later, it’s happening again. Volcano fever hit the northwest in the final days of September 2004. For a week or so, the entire nation watched in anticipation, waiting for a repeat performance- Mt. St. Helens’ big comeback. When that week turned into months, and as geologists debated as to size of the inevitable eruption, even the local networks began to lose interest.
Now that November has arrived, the view from Portland is blocked by a perpetual bank of grey clouds. Without TV and radio, it would be all but impossible to tell if the volcano blew its top, unless the wind shifted south.
The minute that I heard Mt. St. Helens had a familiar rumbling its lava filled belly, I wanted to make a trip up there. I finally got around to it on October 21st.
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According to Mapquest, I would have to allow 90 minutes to get from Portland to Toutle, the closest town to the crater. There was no telling how long it would take to get from there to the Coldwater Ridge Visitors Center, the closest point still open to the public. I tossed the camera in the car and headed north.
For the most part, Highway 504 is a two-lane stretch of pavement that leads past farms and forests. My first stop was Castle Rock, not to be confused with the Castle Rock featured in all those Stephen King novels, although it seems like the perfect setting for a vampire invasion or a coming-of-age search for a missing corpse. A large sign on the edge of town notes the names of each of its twelve churches.
On the edge of highway sat the Cinedome. Take note of the marquee.
Mt. St. Helens erupts every 45 minutes
Shark['s] Tale: 6 PM
In the town's historic district, I found a series of scarecrows in front of various businesses. The one on the right is named Henry and was designed by the students of a local elementary school. Strangely enough, this wouldn't be the weirdest flannel-shirt wearing dummy I would encounter during the trip.
Remember that Stephen King reference a few paragraphs back? It should probably be switched to The Lost Boys. This mural is attached to the side of a bar and grill. A "room for rent" sign was sitting in the window. Hanging over the doorway was another with a flaming steak and this spelled out in black plastic letters:
"Live band. Kids welcome."
Creepy, huh? Does a motorcycle gang of undead adolescents roam the streets of Castle Rock after hours? If so, do they all dress like Keifer Sutherland?
A mural on the side of a pharmacy. This just does to show that cartoon hillbilly beagles are much better at fishing that cartoon hillbilly bears. The dog isn't carrying a pole. This can only mean one thing: he cheated and used dynamite.
This one was sitting on the outskirts of town. I was now a long way from the I-5 corridor. What would have happened if I was caught by local authorities driving and using a cell phone at the same time? I have a sneaking suspicion the words "pistol" and "whip" would have been involved.
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The further I went, the more surreal the landscape became. I was now in Toutle, 30 miles from Mt. St. Helens and traveling through the heart of Twin Peaks country. It's no secret that David Lynch stuck parts of Washington lore into his cult hit. I wonder if he ever passed this high school on the town's main drag. During the eruption, it served as an impromptu evacuation center. A portable freezer unit was brought in to hold the bodies of people caught in the blast that Sunday morning.
I can't think of a reason why the mascot's eyes are blood red, other than that the locals are apart of some Donald Duck-centered cult. Even if such a thing existed, it still wouldn't be as weird as Scientology.
This dog was sitting outside a house next door to the high school. He was perfectly still and starring at me intently. Already creeped out by the town's peculiarities and an official Toutle postcard I found at a gas station, I expected him to start speaking at any second. He didn't move an inch as I took this picture. As I went back to the car, I turned back. He had shifted his sitting position to watch me leave. Still, I hadn't caught him move a millimeter. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn he was stuffed and mounted on that picnic table.
Up the road lied the Toutle Cafe where Cops was playing on a big screen TV near a banquet room filled with broken chairs and scattered toys. The cafe had an entire section of its menu devoted to potatoes. If memory serves, spaghetti and salad potatoes were up for grabs. I ordered a cup of noodle soup and the taco option.
I really wish I had taken a picture of it. The potato that was brought to the table was roughly twice the size of any I had seen before and covered in ground beef, lettuce, olives, tomatoes and a gigantic glob of sour cream. The owners should patent them and open a food cart in downtown Portland. There's a killing to be made off these things.
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Somewhere behind acres of trees wrapped in cloud-banks, St. Helens was quietly fuming. This 15-foot tall Bigfoot statue required a closer look.
The area surrounding the volcano is frequented by those in search of the mythical monster. A chasm on the eastern flank is named Ape Canyon, the site of an alleged Bigfoot attack in the '30s. A Boy Scout group named Ape Cave, a popular hiking spot, after the legends. The Bigfoot Field Researchers Group makes occasional treks into these forests to blast a recording of what they think is the creature's howls, hoping to hear a response that never comes.
Eight hours after the eruption, this spot, known as Maple Flats, was buried in a 100-degree mudflow that slid down the Toutle River and eventually into the Columbia. The A-frame house began construction in 1978 and was three days from completion when the flow hit going 20 MPH, filling the bottom floor with four feet of mud. A huge log slammed through the front windows. It now sits a few yards away. The house is now home to a murky pound and a village of friendly mosquitos.
A small t-shirt shop sat adjacent to the Bigfoot statue. Out front there was a makeshift museum. A recorded voice was giving a tour on a three minute loop. As I took these pictures, I heard its snippet of a blues song written in honor of the volcano. It echoed around the area.
"Mount Saaaaaaaaaaaaint Helens, woah-a-oh-a-oh. always on my mind!"
Harry Truman tributes and the volcano itself, all on page 2
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