Where were you?

[summitchaserCJB]

I'm really sorry Pilchuck, but you were eight, and I was twenty. And I lived about two miles away.

 

We never got ash, ever.

 

And the weather that Sunday, while not immaculately perfect like the previous day, was a fine and good day, with a few high clouds

Not that this helps.. ashfall map

[Doug Smith]

I was standing on top of my parents house (with them) in Portland, OR watching it as it happened. I was 7 years old.

[Kapman]

We did the Castle Crag route on Mt Hood the morning of the 18th. At the summmit it St. Helens was still complete and smoking peacefully. When we got back to Illumination saddle there was 30 or so people standing on the ridge over looking the Reid Glacier. As this was normallly a bathroom area I thought this seemed odd. When we walked over to see what was going on we saw a eruption cloud to about 30000 ft with the most amazing lightning storm I have ever seen. We packed up and never fully realized what the extent of the eruption till we got home to SW WA.

" Be safe, think clearly, climb hard!" Kapman

[wdietsch]

I was in social studies class in Ogden, UT. Not exactly sure which grade I was in though.

 

In class on a Sunday?

[jhamaker]

 

Being driven back (from OR?). When I found out the top 1000+ft was gone I was pissed. I was just getting into climbing at the time.

[andyf]

I was a sophomore in high school in Yakima, along with wdietsch. Well, not actually in school on a Sunday...

 

Highlights of the day:

 

Woke up at 8:30 AM to a funny light coming through the window, saw the darkest thunderhead I'd ever seen coming in from the Cascades.

 

Went outside with my mom (who was supposed to leave on a trip to England that day) to look at the weird cloud approaching. It was like seeing the earth's shadow on the moon, only cutting across the valley. I remember saying "Guess we'd better head in" when I heard what I thought were raindrops starting to hit the pool cover.

 

Everything went pitch black. We couldn't see the porch light across the street.

 

The emergency broadcast system utterly failed. Finally, the news officially broke. By then we'd long figured it out.

 

I spent the afternoon watching the TV. The Mariners were playing the White Sox at old Comisky Park. The TV showed a split screen: one half erupting mountain, one half ballgame. My mom let me drink beer. I think the M's lost.

 

We lived up near the top of a high ridge. Late in the afternoon, a bolt of electricity zapped from a metal sliding porch door to the light fixture over our dining table.

 

My parents had just installed a pool the fall before. Finally, late in the day you could see a few feet outside. There'd been media reports that when the ash hit water, it would create sulfuric acid. My mom looked out at the pool, saw what looked like a vile green acid bath with scum floating on top, and started to cry.

 

30 years later, I'm still running into ash behind blocks and in cracks while cleaning new routes in the Tieton! Dusting from Heaven...

 

 

Edited May 19, 2010 by andyf

[banos]

I was a freshman at Montana State in Bozeman... I'll never forget the weird cloud formations.. we got some ash, but not a lot... It was pretty amazing.. but I must admit... I was much more interested in the dark haired cutie from Libby

[denalidave]

Also, my youngest daughter's birthday today. Happy 5th Birthday, Lil E! Got a bit choked up when they called me during the Happy Birthday song.

 

Best thing on this thread so far!

Happy Birthday to your daughter!

Thanks! She is a real cutie too...

This was a year or so ago. I tried to upload a recent one but I can't seem to upload pics lately, even if I re-size them very small...

 

[OlympicMtnBoy]

I think I opened my eyes that day, deeming it a suitable announcement of my arrival on this planet. ;-)

[denalidave]

I was in social studies class in Ogden, UT. Not exactly sure which grade I was in though.

 

In class on a Sunday?

Hmmm, maybe I'm thinking of the space shuttle disaster then...

 

Or, maybe it was not Sunday yet in Utah. You know, with the time change and all...

[Raindawg]

I was at the Peshastin Pinnacles, climbing "Slender Thread", when a large black cloud emerged. We thought it was going to rain mightily and it did: it rained ash....we figured out what was going down and headed west.

[Pilchuck71]

Awesome dude!

I am a new dad as of May 2nd and am loving it (sleep deprivation and all).

I love seeing the love man!

Good on you!

 

[pindude]

Happy Birthday OMB.

 

I was going to school in Pullman. Thought the approaching clouds were a repeat of the previous morning, only these clouds looked much more menacing. Neighbor came out from her apartment and told us the news. Then surmised that ash + H2O = sulfuric acid (goes right along with my geology knowledge, and yes, I 'd taken a couple chem courses at that point). Discovered soon enough that wasn't true, and with classes eventually cancelled for an entire week, friends and I partied like the Cougs we were.

[denalidave]

I think I opened my eyes that day, deeming it a suitable announcement of my arrival on this planet. ;-)

Happy Birthday!

[denalidave]

I am a new dad as of May 2nd and am loving it (sleep deprivation and all).

CONGRATS!

[murraysovereign]

I was in Vernon, working my high school job at the Vernon Lodge Hotel. I had finished my shift in the early afternoon, and hopped on my bike to ride home. I hadn't even gone a block before this wicked strong wind came up from the south that basically stopped me in my tracks. I decided there's no way I was going to ride 10 miles into so strong a headwind, so I went back into the hotel to have a coffee and read the paper and wait for it to ease up a little. By the time I got my coffee and sat down, maybe a few minutes, the wind had stopped. I thought that was a pretty strange "storm", but finished my coffee and then got back on my bike and headed for home. As I rode past the beach at the north end of Kalamalka Lake, I looked down the lake and saw this big, weird cloud, probably 1500 - 2000 feet deep, right down on the water, literally "rolling" up the valley from the south. I got to the house and went inside, wanting to tell Mom and Dad about this really bizarre weather that was coming our way. Found them in the living room, watching the tv news reports about MSH. Didn't take long to figure out the headwind that blew up as I was leaving work must have been the residual "blast" - I can't think of any other explanation for a wind so brief and intense - followed closely behind by the ash and smoke cloud rolling up the valley. So while I didn't see it go off, I'm pretty sure I felt a bit of it, from hundreds of miles away.

 

Has it really been 30 years? God, I'm getting old fast...

[Off_White]

I was asleep in my bed in Olympia, though the day before I'd have had a ringside seat on the NF of Hood. Olympia only ever got a slight dusting of ash, prevailing winds don't come from St Helen's way.

 

I had friends cresting the Willis Wall that morning, they couldn't see the peak but the apocalyptic cloud was pretty freaky.

[Dane]

Early that morning on Coeur D'Alene Lake it was beatiful. Nice breeze and perfect for sailing the Hobie Cat.

 

Weather can come up fast on the lake and the little boats really zip with one person on them. But hard to right by yourself if you header in a good blow.

 

When the huge "thunder head" came rolling in from the west I hung out as long as I dared wanting to catch the wind before the storm...but strangley those winds never seem to get started so I headed in before the bulk of the incoming storm hit the lake.

 

By the time I had stored the boat the ash was falling.

 

By the time we started the hour drive back to Cd'A we knew what had happened at St. Helens and now required head lights to drive.

It was pitch black by the time I got home. I always wondered what it did to the engine in my VW bus but I sold it a few months later and bought a new Toyota at a discount that had it's glass scored by ash. Didn't seemed to have hurt the Toyota.

 

The next week got very weird in C'dA. It was a small quite town then. The stores that were open ran out of fresh food, with a good dint in the canned goods by weeek's end. Gas was in short supply in just a couple of days. The super fine ash covered everything. People wore sugical masks while they were out, but few ventured out. Roads were still choked with ash. Interesting look at how the populace handles a disaster. Weird and a little scary was my lasting impression.

 

People became very insular and sullen during that first week. Glad it got better and not worse.

 

A week later the sky dawned clear and bright, the clean up was well under way and the entire event seemed like a small inconvience. People were laughing again..which they hadn't been.

 

I went back to work on two projects and sent them a couple of days later.

 

The enfored rest had done me some good

 

Two buddies watched it from the summit ridge of Stuart that morning after doing Ice Cliff. They were impressed. And had a scary trip trying to drive back to Spokane that night.

[Frikadeller]

I was a 7 year old living in Copenhagen, Denmark. I had no clue anything happened, until a month later, it was all in great detail in my Dad's National Geographic Magazine. I was so intrigued at looking at the pictures of the mountain before and after. I think it was my first realization of the awesome power of nature.

[Lowell_Skoog]

I was taking this picture, more or less:

 

 

Mark Bebie and I were on the 7th pitch of Liberty Crack when we heard an explosion that we thought was a sonic boom. We were climbing the route in two days and it was the morning of our second day. We didn't think much more about the noise until we drove through Marblemount that evening. The gas station and store were open past their normal closing time and we were told that Mount St. Helens had blown up and that some people might be fleeing the ash falling in eastern Washington.

 

Oddly, a friend of mine was sitting at Camp Hazard on Mt Rainier with a front-row seat to the eruption and he heard no sound. Apparently the boom bounced off the stratosphere or something, enabling us to hear it 175 miles away.

 

[leearden]

cool post jizzy, i've read all the posts, thinking how moving it would have been to be in the mountains that day....

 

I was trying to build a snowman in Missoula, outside of the "X"s. That fargin' "snow" just would NOT to pack into a ball.

 

My Mom came out to make me wear one of her tube-tops on my face as a mask. I recall being disgusted at the thought of me mum's boob-garment on my face

[Ed_Seedhouse]

I was climbing in Squamish and knew nothing about it until I got home in Victoria when my dad told me.

[aussie69]

You know your an old timer when.... (you recall where you where when Helens blew her lid)