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Photograph by Roger Werth, Daily News
The morning of May 18, 1980
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
Mount St. Helens, flanked by Mount Adams (far left) and Mount Hood, is settling fitfully back into the volcanic landscape. Three decades ago the mountain’s eruption killed 57 people and destroyed more than 200 square miles of forest.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
From Norway Pass, alternating glimpses of destruction and rebirth: the open crater of Mount St. Helens, the vibrant waters of Spirit Lake, a hillside of trees blown down by the eruption, and a blooming patch of bear grass.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
Along the braided North Fork Toutle River, ash-laden sediment clogs the valley bottom, choking stands of fir and alder. In the early 1980s, the river carried 500 times more sediment than before the eruption.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
Even with its top 1,300 feet gone, replaced by a crater (foreground), Mount St. Helens still casts a convincing shadow. In the background is Mount Adams.
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Panoramic by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
A clearing winter storm looking toward the crater of Mount St. Helens.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
Early colonists bloom on a hill near the volcanic monument’s Coldwater Lake: foxglove, lupine, pearly everlasting, red alder. The tree stump is a reminder of pre-1980 logging operations.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
Cloaked in the first snowfall of winter and the last light of day, Mount St. Helens sits above Spirit Lake and the Pumice Plain. During the eruption the mountain’s summit and north flank collapsed, sending a slurry of ice, mud, and rock sliding into the lake at 150 miles an hour.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
A storm clears, revealing fir saplings on Johnston Ridge—and a remnant of the former forest.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
Why show St. Helens with its summit intact? Ramona Kmetz Lauzon, who painted the mural in Castle Rock, Washington, in 1996, explains, “People said they’d rather see the old mountain.”
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
St. Helens Lake, perched above Spirit Lake in the volcanic monument’s 30,000-acre restricted research area, remains closed to hikers and fly fishers. The body of water was left pristine so scientists can watch natural processes unfold after the blast.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
A ghostly stand of trees eight miles from St. Helens shows how pre-blast remnants can shape the ecosystem’s recovery. Nurtured and shaded by the old forest, a new forest rapidly grows.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
Torn from the hills, thousands of dead trees still float on Spirit Lake. Toxic in the immediate aftermath of the blast, the lake is now richer than ever—filled with tadpoles, aquatic plants, and 20-inch rainbow trout.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
On the regreening Pumice Plain, the elk population has soared, causing game managers to invite the first post-eruption hunters—eight a year—into the restricted research area.
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Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
Buried in ash and washed out by mud slides, then controversially rebuilt in the 1980s and ‘90s at a cost of $160 million, State Route 504 leads to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, overlooking the Pumice Plain and Mount St. Helens’s gaping crater.
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