Where were you when the mountain blew...Mt.St. Helens???

Self-employed Landscape Gardener, living in Sennen, Cornwall, near Lands End. Bike in those days was a red Honda 400 four.
I do remember we had 3 or 4 poor summers after the eruption (due to the ash in the atmosphere?)
 
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On the island we do not have an awareness of happening on the mainland. A mountain blew up you say? Couldn't you schedule it for the 4th of July?
 
wheelsthatgrip said:
Living in Reseda California, a year out of High School, turning a wrench for a living. I remember watching it on television and thinking back now I probably didn't understand the magnitude of it all, the loss of life/property and how peoples lives would be devastated for years to come.

Back in March I was in Vancouver to bury my Father. It was a sunny day, I could see Mount St. Helens covered in snow. It's beauty in the distance disguised its devastation.

Keith
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Interesting. I was in Marina del Rey CA, turning wrenches as well. A memorable event for sure.
 
Coop said:
On the island we do not have an awareness of happening on the mainland. A mountain blew up you say? Couldn't you schedule it for the 4th of July?
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'No Man is an Island'
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII, 1624
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne

Seems they were expecting you Coop, since at least 1624. ;)
 
BakerBoy said:
​
'No Man is an Island'
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII, 1624
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne


Seems they were expecting you Coop, since at least 1624. ;)
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But continental drift wasn't even a theory back then. Help stop manmade continental drift and reunite Pangea. We only have 12 years to do this.
 
I was a professional helicopter pilot working in Northern Oregon for a company that did US Forest Service work at the time. Well, we immediately started worked for the US Geological Survey Teams shuttling men and equipment up to to Mt. St. Helens. I lived in fear of the helicopter engines flaming out from all of the ash in the air as we approached the ground for landings and takeoffs. I had been up to the Mt. St. Helens area many times previously to fish for Steelhead Trout on the Cowlists River that was completely wiped out. It was a time that I will never forget.
 
Portland Oregon, and was adjusting a multitude of claims in Washington and Oregon for the insurance industry as a result of the ash and such for the next few months. It wrecked car engines. Ash particulates in the intake were like fine abrasives.
 
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Jay51 said:
I was a professional helicopter pilot working in Northern Oregon for a company that did US Forest Service work at the time. Well, we immediately started worked for the US Geological Survey Teams shuttling men and equipment up to to Mt. St. Helens. I lived in fear of the helicopter engines flaming out from all of the ash in the air as we approached the ground for landings and takeoffs. I had been up to the Mt. St. Helens area many times previously to fish for Steelhead Trout on the Cowlists River that was completely wiped out. It was a time that I will never forget.
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I used to fish spirit lake. Also pretty much gone afterwards. I wonder how many of the bears up there were incinerated. I remember several in the campground.
 
I was up there daily for about two month afterwards and saw nothing alive. The area where Spirit Lake was, was just muck, debris and downed trees. Same for all of the creeks and river beds.
 
ToddC said:
Time to bring this thread out again...... Saturday will be 39 years since the big BANG happened.

Where were you???

ToddC
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Again... Not born.

Closest I got was reading about it in books at high school.
 
I climbed Mt. St. Helens as my first major peak back in high school. I remember our team crossing the crater to get to the summit, and I was thinking of how this was supposed to be an active volcano. I wondered what it would be like if it blew as we were walking across it.

Later that summer, I had my right leg in a full length cast and my family walked around Spirit Lake.

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When it blew, I was over in England, serving in the USAF at RAF Mildenhall.

Chris
 
Tomorrow is 39 years ago.......hard to believe for me. I'm really not that old...am I?? :confused::rolleyes::censored:
 
I was working on my Dads farm in Manitoba that year cuz he had gotten sick. About 1500 miles away as the crow flies from where it happened. I knew that it had happened cuz of all the news reports. But wasn’t very concerned cuz it was an international border and a long ways away. But then a week later, the ash blew in and the interior of my brand new chev pickup was covered in the stuff. My sister couldn’t wear her contacts for a few days there.
 
I was living in Puerto Ayacucho, Venezuela, flying missionaries. Heard about it on short wave radio, Voice of America, that night. Didn’t really understand the magnitude of the event till I saw pictures in Newsweek magazine some weeks later.
 
Home in Cleveland in May.
Just missed a backyard view of the August eruption by a few days before and after as our Oregon vacation had us visiting Myrtle OR while based out of Scapoose OR. We got to collect the different looking ash from the the eruptions. Teenage geological fascination for me and my brother.
 
When Mount Saint Helens erupted, I was 8 years old and living in Union Oregon just outside of La Grande Oregon. We had roughly 1/2 inch dusting of ash on the ground.
 
At March AFB, CA (navigator, KC-135s). Really paid attention to the flight restrictions issued because of the airborne ash. It's bad news for windscreens and engines to fly through it. Flew around the peak in the mid-80s in a AF Reserves C-130 as we were on our way into Portland. What a mess!
 
Driving a semi from L.A. to Portland the day after, about jack knifed in the ash mud on the road. Had to deadhead back south because no one was shipping anything.
 
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