At the south end of Washington State’s Cascades Range lies Mt. St. Helens, a recently taller stratovolcano, and the adjacent Spirit Lake. In 1980, St. Helens erupted, sending the entire northern face of this enormous mountain either up to around 60,000 feet or sideways and downhill into Spirit Lake. The shock wave from the blast thundered across the landscape on the mountain’s northeast side, blowing down a couple hundred square miles of timber. All the terrain facing the blast was scoured of life and pummeled with hot rock, sand and dust. Six to fourteen feet of ash fell from the enormous column of smoke and rock that spewed from the mountain for the next few days. 1300 feet of the top of the volcano was vaporized.
Millions of tons of rock and mud from the mountain and its almost instantly melted glaciers slid down the lower portion of the mountain with a large salient of goo sliding into the formerly scenic Spirit Lake. The mini-tsunamis created by the abrupt change in scenery sent lake waters up to scour the adjacent hillsides of timber and return the destroyed material into the lake. Bacteria worked its magic and the lake became a fetid swamp emitting carbon dioxide and other nasty gases into the environment, killing all life. A few years later, dilution from rains and glacial runoff allowed the lake to start recovering and by the time ten years had passed, the lake’s waters were again pristine. There is an enormous raft of decaying logs covering substantial amounts of the lake surface, bleached by more than 35 years of exposure.

We decided to go give this amazing place a sniff. We started east on Centralia Alpha Road until we hit WA-507 which continued mostly east. Eventually we encountered WA-12 at Morton. Again turning east we went to the village of Randal where we turned into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest on WA-131 to FR-25 to FR-99 into Mt. St. Helens National Monument. 10 or so miles down FR-99 brought us to the Windy Ridge Overlook. The volcano, or at least the bottom of it because today was cloudy, fills the horizon on one side and Spirit Lake fills the other. On the enormous slide between them, elk graze in the new growth that is just getting started on the surface of the slide. It is a colossal landscape.
The quality of the first 25 miles of road from our RV park to Randal is ordinary Washington highway; nominal. Once past Randal on 131, all bets are off. The road surface is terrible, even for Washington. Large sections of sunken grade try to pitch the unsuspecting into deep chasms along the road. Despite the dreadful road surfaces and widths, the scenery alongside WA-131, FR-25 and FR-99 is magnificent. Large expanses of timber blown down in 3 minutes of absolute shitstorm can be seen on some hillsides. All these partially rotted trees point the same direction. Flowers have regained their foothold here and are abundant and colorful. The extent of devastation caused by the eruption is truly impressive and plainly evident even though 36 years have elapsed since the blast.
FR-99 does not go through to anywhere so we were obliged to backtrack down the minefield-like road through the amazing scenery to get back to our park. The round trip is a bit over 100 miles from Chehalis and it is worth every minute required to get there and back.
We took a few photos during our drive through this gorgeous area. You can see some if you click here