Mountain Men (and Women)

Rainier and St. Helens (F.O.G.s)

Following our Puget Sound/Olympic Peninsulad experience, we had to remind ourselves of the trailer packing routine after 19 nights at the Gig Harbor ReV "Resort" (trust me, they almost all think they are resorts.)

For the first time in about 6 weeks, we headed back east for the mountain portion of our journey. Although Dave and Tex summited Mt. Rainier in 2006, and Dave had also seen Mt. St. Helens from the eastern (non-visitor center) side, this was a chance for me to experience these two geologic wonders, which are relatively close to each other.

Our RV destination was Randle, a tiny town on state highway 12 that gave us access to both parks. The facility was definitely not a “resort”; but it fit our needs. The owners had moved west from Oklahoma, and we would have liked the place better had we not had to drive past a confederate flag each time we went to our site. 

Before we settled in on this Sunday, however, I told Dave I wanted to attend a Presbyterian worship service nearby. David, the former Education Director at my San Antonio church, had moved with his family for his own call after being ordained a year ago. I knew his town of Packwood was near Mt. Rainier but had no idea it was practically at the foot of the mountain.

Betsy enjoyed catching up with the Packwood pastor from her Texas church. David even let Dave ring the bell on the beautiful building in this quaint town.

By the way, these two geological giants are also named for “F.O.G.s:” Peter Rainier was a friend of George Vancouver’s, as was Baron St. Helens Alleyne Fitzherbert (whew!). Rainier was an admiral in the British navy who never saw the mountain or came anywhere close to present-day Washington, which is one of the reasons locals have lobbied to return the name to its Native American roots of Tahoma. This isn’t too different from the renaming (or reclamation) of Alaska’s Mt. McKinley to Denali. 

We had noticed that most locals pronounced the name of the peak differently than us. When I asked my friend David how he pronounced it (Ráin-ear vs. Ra-néar?), he said they just call it Tahoma.

We parked the truck and trailer in the huge parking lot at Packwood Community Presbyterian Church and arrived (a tad late) to David’s service. It’s a small church in a small town but seems to fit him and his family perfectly, and he was as insigthful as ever. 

In another example of “it’s a small world after all” David also introduced another family they knew from Texas at the service. Kara and her husband had moved from San Antonio, where they were members at First Presbyterian, to – wait for it – Gig Harbor! In addition, she's a Trinity grad! They were in the area visiting family and notified us after the service that their minivan had a flat tire. 

While David’s two sons entertained the visiting kids, we brought pizza back to the church’s cozy community room for lunch while they waited for their AAA assistance. It was an interesting start to our trip to the area.

 

Betsy’s friend David picked a great town. This is the view leaving Packwood’s only grocery store. Not bad.

 
Finally, Rainier!

 

Mt. Rainier was Betsy’s 48^th National Park and 256^th NPS site. We caught it on a good day.

The next day looked relatively clear, and based on our previous (usually unsuccessful) experience of Rainier sightings, we decided to head quickly to the east side of the mountain. The views were spectacular, although Dave summed it up well when he commented that it looked less intimidating up close. 

At a distance, Rainier is spectacular because it looms above the far horizon without similar-height mountains around it, like the other tall peaks in the state that are nestled in a range. Rainier was snowy and white and beautiful that day, but I agreed with his observation.

Up close or afar, Rainier is huge at 14,411 feet, and it has 25 named glaciers. 

The first day at Rainier we joined Ranger McCall on a “pollinators” walk. As a recent college grad and AmeriCorps volunteer, she was nice but you could tell she was still finding her voice. Our second day there we joined Amaya, one of her AmeriCorps colleagues. Amaya, also a recent grad, had not only found her own voice, but had devised an interactive routine for the 20 or so folks in our group to connect us with the wildflowers we would be viewing on the walk. She also taught us about "biophilia," a concept from writer E.O. Wilson that purports humans have an evolutionary need to connect with other living things (which we seem to be losing). She engaged and inspired us, and I’m putting that writer on my reading list!

The other concept she discussed was resilience as one of the strengths of biodiversity. Of course that was also a theme of our immigrant talks in Seattle, and would also be a lesson from our visit to Mt. St. Helens.

We were impressed by AmeriCorps volunteer Amaya, who gave us the most enthusiastic and esoteric philosophical Ranger walk ever.

 

Our “pollinator’s Ranger walk was OK, but you couldn’t beat the views.

Unlike the obvious activity at its fellow Cascade mountain down south, Rainier has been quiet since the white man arrived. But should there be activity, the danger of Lahars (slurry-like mudslides) running off the volcano are the biggest threats for a huge part of the region, including all the way west to Puget Sound. In fact, we learned that Tacoma is built on a Lahar deposits from an earlier eruption. Something to think about.

It was fun seeing these two adorable spotted fawns on one of our Rainier hikes.

All three days in the mountains we had to eat our lunch in a crowded parking lot, usually facing away from the view. These pinnacles opposite Rainier weren’t a bad second act.

Most of the pollinators our Ranger pointed out didn’t pose for a picture. This little green guy did.

The first Rainier visitor center was intentionally burned down in the 1960s, replaced by a spaceship-looking building that Dave and Tex visited in 2006, then again replaced by a much  smaller one (below) in 2008.

Rainier’s Cowlitz glacier melts into its namesake river downstream, which is a dull gray, like its related “glacial flour” rivers. It’s because of these 25 named glaciers that Lahars (slurry-like mudslides) running off the volcano are the biggest threat to the region, including all the way to Puget Sound.

On our final drive away from Rainier, we learned why they called this “Reflection Lake,” with the help of a Father/Son from New Jersey, who took this picture of us.

The Grove of the Patriarchs was a beautiful old-growth forest stop in the Rainier area. It looks like Dave’s wingspread isn’t quite enough to make him a tree-hugger (below).

Mt. St. Helens
Mt. Rainier was established in 1899 as the country’s 5^th National Park. In contrast, Mount St. Helens is just a kid. It was just another snow-capped peak in the Cascades until the 1980 eruption that led to it becoming a Volcanic National Monument in 1982 (administered by the U.S. Forest Service).  

We drove to Mt. St. Helens on our third day in the area and caught a great view of the crater side with just a small cloud obscuring the view. As the day progressed, the fog started to roll in, as you can see from the photos below.

The Forest Service interpretation was fabulous. We listened to two talks by a Forest Service cultural resources ranger, watched two life-like films recreating the landslide and eruption, and took a hike with FS interpretative ranger Roz to learn how nature has been clawing its way back to this former “moonscape” over the past 39 years. 

First, a reminder of what happened in May of 1980. (By the way, it didn’t just spout off the top, like we would expect from our middle-school science fair experiments from the 60s with paper mache and baking soda.)

In early 1980, geologists had been observing an alarming number of earthquakes around the mountain, as well as a disturbing 150-foot-wide bulge on one side. As a result, the state government ordered residents and visitors to leave a five-mile area (based on a similar event in Japan that covered that land area.) 

One of those who stayed (legally) was 30-year-old volcanologist David Johnston, and another was Harry S. Truman, the famous resident who refused to leave his Spirit Lake resort.

On the morning of May 18, 1980, one of the observers outside the five-mile area took a picture of steam coming out the top. Then, over the next few hours, the mountain shed tons of rock in the largest landslide in recorded history and the largest lateral eruption ever observed. 

The landslide covered 14 miles in 10 minutes, burying the valley under a 200-foot layer of rock, ash and debris that far exceeded the five-mile estimate, obliterated the forests nearby and snapped trees at their base many miles beyond.

Then the lava, which was attempting to flow through an obstruction, instead blew out in the first lateral eruption ever viewed. The sideways blast covered 17 miles, leveling 230 square miles of forest and valley (approximately the size of Chicago) in just three minutes.

Here are some other almost incomprehensible outcomes of this event: it threw rock 60 miles north to Mt. Rainier; reduced the height of the mountain from 10,700 ft to 8,300-feet tall; created a crater 2 miles wide; made nearby Spirit Lake rise almost 200 feet; sent an ash plume 15 miles high; created three new lakes, and interrupted international shipping on the Columbia River 17 miles to the south for two weeks because of mudflow (or lahar.) Later sediment retention dams were built to hold back this still-moving flow.

Of course, people died. Volcanologist Johnston was able to report the blast before succumbing to the effects, and Truman – who incidentally DID want to leave – also perished. Neither body was found. Another 55 died, most of whom were outside the restricted area.

Despite the tragedy, much of the story is now about how we can learn from this current event to build better prediction models and observe how nature can respond to such a disaster.

This shows the mountain before and after.

The interpretation wasn’t just about the 1980 eruption. We also learned there was another event between 2004 and 2008 with multiple earthquakes and minor eruptions. During that time the lava flowed up through the open vents (not stopped-up like in 1980), and a 1,000-foot “pile” has formed from that in the middle of the crater. 

I think that’s what really impressed me about Mt. St. Helens. Over the years we have visited dozens of volcanoes, calderas, lava fields and other geologic features. We’ve faithfully read the interpretative panels, trying to remember our college geology to make sense of the millions of years of ancient seas, ice age floods, uplift and erosions resulting in these huge features.

But once the rangers explained the new peak that was forming since 2004 in the crater, I felt a modern connection to this ancient idea. Not only did this eruption happen in our lifetime, but in just the past 15 years a new mountain is forming – almost in real time!

We learned from our Ranger talks at Mt. St. Helens that no video exists of the eruption, since everything set up in what was deemed the “safe” area was decimated by the blast.

After the incredible films shown at Mt. St. Helens, the drapes open to this  view of the damaged mountain, which would have been more amazing had the clouds not rolled in.

It got chilly and foggy on our Mt. St. Helens walk, so Ranger Roz had to hold up pictures to show what we were supposed to be seeing on the moonscape left behind.

The Ranger pointed out these familiar plants, crucial to the restoration of the region. These Prairie Lupin are cousins of our beloved Texas Bluebonnets. They add nitrogen to the soil, helping bring other plants back to the decimated area.

One of those plants helped by the Lupin is the Magenta Paintbrush, another relative of some of our favorite Texas wildflowers, just a few thousand miles north!

Luckily there hasn’t been much action since 2008, but I was happy to get out of there regardless.

Next, our exit via the hop-filled Tri-Cities area…