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xoxoxoBruce Saturday Apr 4 12:15 AM April 4th, 2020 : Helen’s Spirit
The Spirit was broken 40 years ago when Helen blew her top, breaking Spirit and killing Harry Truman.
What?
Harry Truman was a bombastic character who drove a Pink ’57 Cadillac and ran Mt Saint Helens Lodge on Spirit Lake 100 miles
south of Seattle. In the months leading up to Helen’s eruption he was treasure to the media because he was vocal about
hating Republicans, hippies, young children, and especially old people, while telling them stories like he wore spurs to bed so
the earthquakes wouldn’t toss him out during the night. When the government ordered the area evacuated he refused to leave,
so presumably died when the mountain buried his home under 150 feet of debris. Shame about the Caddy.
Quote:
An estimated 1 million trees were blown away from the surrounding hillside by a super-heated wall of volcanic gas and searing ash and rock, and these along with other rubble were deposited on Spirit Lake. The debris avalanche temporarily displaced much of the lake from its bed sending 600-foot-high waves crashing into a ridge north of the lake. As the water moved back into its basin, it pulled with it thousands of more trees into the lake. About 350,000 acre-feet of pyrolized trees were deposited into Spirit Lake and these shattered trees formed a floating log raft on the lake surface that is present to this day, more than three decades after the event.
Huge quantities of debris decreased the lake volume by approximately 46,000 acre-feet, and its depth by 80 feet. Lahar and pyroclastic flow deposits from the eruption blocked its natural pre-eruption outlet to the North Fork Toutle River valley at its outlet, raising the surface elevation of the lake by 200 feet.
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Quote:
When scientists saw the mass destruction, they realized that Sprit Lake provided them with a rare opportunity to study microbial and chemical transformations and the biological restoration of a lake severely impacted by a major volcanic disturbance. To ensure protection of Spirit Lake and other recovering ecosystems inside the volcano's 220-square-mile blast area, the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was created in 1982. Fishing and other recreational activities potentially disruptive to Spirit Lake's recovery are prohibited. This is one of the primary reasons why no attempts were made to recover the logs and other forest debris floating in the lake.
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I remember them being all exited a couple weeks after the blast when Elk were spotted playing tourist on the side of the mountain.
I think it was a year or two later they felt the debris blocking the natural exit raising the surface 200 feet was unsafe. A sudden
failure would send a wall of mud and water down the Toutle endangering everyone along the route so they lowered the lake level.
Those operatives scientists could be raising Cthulhus under that log raft, planning to overthrow our benevolent robot overlords.
link
Diaphone Jim Saturday Apr 4 12:45 PMAfter several days of standard soggy Washington camping south of Mt. St. Helens, we found a great view of the smoky peak from Goat Mountain, five miles SW.
We spent another two days, May 15 and 16, watching and waiting.
We left on the morning of the 17th, having run out of food and film.
The volcano blew the next day to the east and northeast, leaving our spot untouched.
xoxoxoBruce Saturday Apr 4 01:20 PMI don't remember a Goat Mountain. Of course it was only 40 years ago.
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