and bang goes the Mountain...

Hello Ladies and Gents.

Well, I got back from Seattle OK - and now I have to tell you all about it!

If you don't like words, all the pictures are in the gallery here.

So. To start at the beginning... Drove myself up to IAH ('Intercontinental Airport Houston' I believe) and parked in the cheapo parking lot (only 6 bucks a day - pretty good for airport parking!). On to the shuttle bus that took me merrily to Terminal E for check in for Continental, the USA's least worst airline. I had crammed everything into a carry on bag, so already had my boarding pass (printed at work) so proceeded to get undressed for security as is the norm nowadays. I was airside in just a couple of minutes, so now I had over an hour to kill before boarding.

Thanks to my contribution to Global warming in the past year, (Chile 3 times, Round the world once, and back to Europe - oh - I don't know - 6 times) British Airways had rewarded me with their 'Person Most Likely To Create a Grape Growing Industry in Britain' card, otherwise known as the Gold Tier of the BA Executive Club. This is rather splendid, as I was informed in the glitzy literature that accompanied the aformentioned card that it could be used to get in to BA lounges regardless of who I was travelling with that day. I decided to give this a try, and wondered through to terminal D where I found the BA lounge had been commandeered by China Airways. Never one to be put off that easily, I entered anyway and was duly directed to the bar where I partook of some Gin and Tonic, and some nice sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Not to shabby. I also collected up all the british newspapers I could find (they'd come in on that day's BA flights) and fed them into my already overstuffed bag.

So the hour of waiting passed rather nicely (stuffing newspapers into bag), and so I boarded the Continental Jet to Seattle, 4 and a half hours away. Due to the 2 hour time difference, it was 11:30pm when we reached Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and I headed straight for the Hertz rental area. BHP has a deal with Hertz, and therefore if you make a reservation on their website, your name simply appears on a display screen, and you just go to the numbered bay next to your name. There you find your car, with the keys in the ignition and the contract all signed and sealed hanging from the rear view mirror. Very quick and simple - I was driving out of the airport within 20 minutes of landing, and spent the next 20 minutes driving in circles to find the hotel thanks to my trusty GPS having the wrong address in its database. Ah well.

Saturday dawned with an overcast sky (Seattle gets millions of inches of rain a year), but undaunted I headed south and then Northwest bound for Olympic National Park. I crossed over the Tacoma Narrows (site of the infamously wobbly bridge that wobbled itself to destruction in a great example of resonance), and passed through thick forests of evergreen trees for much of the route.


Finally, Olympic National Park hove in to view (what the hell is hove anyway - I'm not even sure its a real word???) , and I wound my way upwards to over 4,000 feet (I think). We hit the snowline, which made for a nice walk through the forests, with meltwater streams rushing off downhill. There was a lot of spiky mountainy snowy foresty stuff going on, which made for a great contrast to Houston. These mountains are not volcanic - just your common or garden 'plate crashing into plate' type.

Next stop was the fairly remote northwest corner of the USA (apart from Alaska of course), but halfway there the car dropped out of cruise control and the 'check engine' light came on. I pulled over, and checked that the engine was still there, and it was, so I carried on for a bit. The light resolutely failed to turn off however, and I was a little concerned about heading further away from civilisation in a car that may well cease to provide motive force. In desperation, I looked in the manual that said that I should return the car to a dealer immediately, not drive it anywhere, and not tow it anywhere either. With this particularly helpful bit of advice in my head, I proceeded to drive it 150 miles back to Seattle at 70mph. Still keen on a little bit of touristing, I cut off the rather large detour through Tacoma, and took the ferry across Puget sound to Seattle. This was quite good fun, and I was rewarded with 40 minutes of fat tourists with cameras taking pictures of each other. I joined in a little with the photo taking bit, but drew the line at the getting fat bit.


So, back in Seattle, I went back to the airport and swapped out the car for another. This time they gave me a Subaru Mega-Guzzler XLT which had only 96 miles on the clock. I took it out for a test drive to the Northlake Tavern and Pizza House which had been reccomended to me by a workmate in Houston. I spent the drive back swerving across multiple lanes of Seattle's freeway system as I was playing with the Satellite Radio system - never had the opportunity before.

Sunday saw me head south, and away from Seattle towards Mount St Helens, the real reason for the trip. This mountain blew it's top about 7 days before I was born

Fifty-seven people were killed; and 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km)
of railways and 185 miles (300 km) of highway were destroyed.

--Wikipedia

Trees were laid flat up to 17 miles away. For those that don't know, it's lava dome that had been steadily growing collapsed in a landslide on it's northen flank, causing a huge relese of pressure, analogous to taking the cap off a hot car radiator, just with more lava involved. Apparantly, if you'd been standing on the ridge where the visitor centre is today, and held up a metre square frame, 60 tonnes of rock would have flown though it.

Every Second.

For Three Minutes.

That's a lot.





Thanks to the high peaks, the crater itself was largely shrouded in cloud, but I took a walk for a couple of miles along the ridge towards Spirit Lake which was partially filled in by the mudslides and pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The land even now looks very harsh, with thick layers of ash cut deeply by streams and rivers. You can see a layer of dead trees - big ones - 150 feet tall some of them - that are buried by a couple of metres of debris. Quite amazing, and all very recent. The volcano is still active of course, and a new lava dome is growing as we speak.



The walk took me along the first ridge that the blast would have hit - about 5 miles or 3 seconds away from the crater. The ridge is pretty well blasted, with fallen trees and very hummocky ground that was basically formed by the debris being deposited on the lee side. It was pretty cold too, with the snowline not far away, making me glad I brought a decent hat and gloves! As it was almost exactly 27 years to the day that Mt St Helens last erupted, the amount of snow was possibly similar which explains the huge amount of meltwater that would have been caused by the eruption that in turn created massive mudflows that washed down rivers, destroying bridges and property many miles away.



I spent the night about an hour away from the Volcano, and on Monday thought I would head around it's south side for a different view. This time the drive was very different, travelling through thick forest all the way, and winding my way up roads for hours! Unfortunately the spur road to a viewpoint 5 miles from the crater was still closed due to snow, but I got the odd glimpse of the peak in the breaking clouds. The mountain is surprisingly steep - just like you'd expect a decent volcano to look!

I ended up in Mount Ranier National Park on the way back to Seattle, I had roughtly planned to drive through the park, but it turned out all through roads were closed as several sections had been washed away due to the huge amount of rain in 2006. These are not little dirt roads by the way, but fairly reasonable paved highways. Therefore I went on a shortish walk around in the forests, and wondered down to Silver Falls in the southeast corner of the park. The river was full, carrying meltwater, but even so it was flowing in a canyon that had a good 5 metres from rim to river. It was therefore pretty amazing that a footbridge crossing this canyon was still in the process of being repaired, as it too had been damaged by flooding. An incredible amount of water was involved!

It was time to head back to the airport for my 5:50pm flight, and the journey out of the mountains was uneventful. Dropped off the car, checked in and found a BA lounge in which to sit and wait.

We took off under clear skies, and had the most incredible view of Mount Ranier off our left wingtip about 10 minutes after takeoff. The pilot announced it's imminent arrival, and said that it would only be 10 miles off our wing, and as we were still climbing up to cruise, although we were already at 13,000 feet, the peak would be higher than us, topping out at 14,410 feet. It was pretty amazing to see such a huge mountain so close! Got some good photos though! You could see the entire volcano, with some stunning views of the snowfields and glaciers.

Arrived back in Houston just before midnight local time, and the plane promptly had it's windows cloaked in condensation as we touched down thanks to the killer humidity! Nice. Home and in bed shortly after 1am for a short week back at work.

Labels: Travel, Washington

posted by Sam @ 8:13 PM