Our first trip was to Mt. St. Helens which erupted in 1980 and destroyed 150,000 acres.  Everything in this picture was gone.  The part that is green was replanted by Weyerhauser as the land was owned by they.  Federal lands had to recover by themselves so scientists could study the process.

 The mountain was growing 5 feet a day on this, the north side, before it erupted.  There was only 1 seismograph there to measure the 10,000 earthquakes that preceded the eruption.  The explosion which was equal to the force of multiple atomic bombs was not heard by anyone nearby because it went straight up!

 The animals are slowly returning to the land as evidenced by this herd of elk grazing.

The eruption tore down 150 ft trees and carried them along with the magma increasing the devastion.  The flow was whiter than usual because of the extreme density of the pumice-like quality of the magma.  There was no red like there is in the Hawaiian volcano which is more liquid.