I was at Ft Lewis that weekend, for drill and inspection, we thought it was a Milwaukee Road train because of the rumble, then we saw the cloud about 2 minutes later, and realized this was an "oh shit" moment of history.
That was back in legacy America before the Long March turned into a track meet and the Great Leap Potato. A lil' shaver in school, they interrupted class to tell us, long before the 24-7 enemedia dumbing down. God has to remind man every now then to read the whole thing.
Gary Rosenquist's 23 photograph series in the first 30 seconds is perhaps the most epic photographed capture of a natural event in all of the 20th century. Still impressed 40 years later.
I was 7 years old, living in Everett, Wa. My dad heard the eruption. A few days later, we had some ash. My dad collected it in empty bottles we had around the house. Even though the ash was very, very fine, it is quite heavy. We still have that ash.
Went to the St Helens area a couple of years ago. Man, was it amazing what the Volcano did! Dead trees everywhere, huge ash layers slowing being gouged out by water streaming from the mountain. Granted the new growth forest was impressive, the scale of just looking at was left of the mountain was incredible! I felt very small that day! When I was serving in the Coast Guard on a cutter out in the Caribbean, we did see the volcano erupt on Montserrat in 1997. That was very impressive. The ash cloud was creating static electricity, pretty crazy to see.
We were on a road trip. We visited Mt. St. Helens 24 hrs before the first eruption. The ash settled all over our car in the parking lot of a Calgary motel the next night.
Worked for the forest service as a comms tech out of the fire camp setup out of Trout Lake to fight fires in the red zone. Hiked, and flew in a helo, all over that area setting up and maintaining repeater sites for the ground crews. Lots of hot, hard, grueling work. Several very close calls and lots of fond memories as well.
After one of the eruptions we were standing around waiting to find out if we were going to have to evac the fire camp and wandered over to the catering crew van to grab some food. The ash was falling so heavily we couldn't eat our chow as it was covered in moments by the ash and it was like chewing on a mouthful of sand.
The fire camp was in the bottom of a valley. The antennas were on the top of Flat Top mountain. We had two legs of wire, one five miles long, the other seven miles long to get to the antennas. The boxes of radio wire were a quarter mile in length and weighed either 60 or 80lbs each, I remember any longer. I had a couple of fire crew members helping me layout the wire for the legs. We hiked in laying out a quarter mile at a time, three quarters mile in, three quarters mile out. Grab a new round of wire, hike in three quarters mile and start laying another three quarters of wire again. Hike out a mile and a half and grab another round of wire. Hike in a mile and a half and start laying wire again. Rinse and repeat for both lines. Probably should mention this was not flat land, but straight up and down getting to the position where the antennas weren't blocked by terrain.
The helo pilots were incredible in getting into and out of places trying to find sites for setting up gear. Sometimes in brutal conditions. One repeater we set up was at the old lookout site on Steamboat Mtn. Over the years since the lookout was abandoned the forest had encroached on the opening around the lookout. We didn't have a lot of space for the pilot to set down and keep the rotor tips clear of trees and the skids from being right on the edge of the cliff face.
It was a bluebird day and he set down with narry a bump. I got everything setup and just before leaving he said “Why don’t you put some ribbon or flags on those antenna guy wires so we have a visual next time we have to land here”. Well the next time we had to land there was in the middle of a major storm that had rolled in. We had crews in the field and our comms had gone down. I had set the repeaters so there was a delay in the squelch tails. By counting the squelch tails you could determine which site was down. The repeater site on Steamboat was the one that had gone down.
When we got to the site the ribbons were whipping around and flapping in the wind like an epileptic on crack during a seizure. “Do we really have to land there?” The pilot asked. Well we were required to keep comms up whenever we had crews in the field. He set us down and said “keep your head down when you’re out there because I’m not shutting this thing down, just backing off on the collective”. Just as I unbuckled and stood up to move to the door he shouted “Hang on were going over” and the wind took us off the edge of the cliff. I’ll just state that I’m still alive as a testament to his skills. A couple weeks later we heard that a pilot, helitack foreman, fire observer and comm tech at a California fire were killed in a crash caused by an almost identical set of conditions. Those pilots had balls so big they clanged when they walked.
A different eruption we flew past the St. Helens crater just minutes before the mountain went KFB again. It was a dicey few minutes as we basically ran before the cloud of ash blasting our way. Looking back at the cloud of ash and lightning it was like looking into the mouth of hell. Long roils of ash seemed to reach out as if to grab us. Our helo crew again saved our asses big time.
Another time we were on a no name knob north of the crater setting up a repeater site. The knob was so steep and pronounced that we had to land, unload our gear, then the pilot had to lift off so we could lay out our cables between our boxes and the antennas, then land again. There wasn't room to work around the helo otherwise. While we were bent over hooking things up we started getting buffeted by heavy rotor wash and thought the pilot was being an asshole playing a bad prank. We bitched at him over the comm set and he just said hurry up. While we were working the clouds had rolled in heavy. He was using the rotor wash to blow the clouds off the knob so we didn't go zero zero for visibility. We didn't find that out till later. As soon as we got set up and tested we hopped in and heard him talking over the radio to our little makeshift control tower that we had blue sky above us and visible ground below us. We took off and seconds later he told control we had gone zero zero for vis. Apparently if we were zero zero for vis before we took off he couldn't take off and he didn't want to sit it out (the socked in cloud cover) in the blast zone of the volcano. Like I expressed we didn't find some of this out till later.
The tail end of this particular story was the entire region had been socked in by the clouds. All we could see was Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams poking through the cloud cover to the north and east and Mt. Hood to our south. The area around Trout Lake, where our impromptu airfield and control tower lay, was completely invisible. Our alternate airfield was down near Portland and the pilot was concerned about fuel and they weren't really in any better condition for the cloud cover. The helitack foreman and pilot worked to triangulate our position and then had the guys in the tower tells us our bearing from them based on our rotor noise. Once we got into position we started settling down through the cloud cover with one of us partially hanging out each side door keeping any eye out for anything. This was with visibility measured in inches, not feet. Suddenly we lost contact with the guys in the tower and then fellow at the other door shouted ground and we were set down. The crew ran through the shutdown checklist and as the turbine noise faded away to nothing we got out to total silence. A couple of moments later we heard a voice in the mist shouting out at us. Later we found out we landed so close to the tower they thought we were going to crash into it and had abandoned the tower in fear.
Another time we hit up the catering crew and asked if there were any gals that would like to see the volcano up close and personal. The girls rustled up some box lunches and I whistled up a helo and… well there are some things shouldn't be shared in an open enviro.
Man, this really took me back, like I expressed good times.
I was at Ft Lewis that weekend, for drill and inspection, we thought it was a Milwaukee Road train because of the rumble, then we saw the cloud about 2 minutes later, and realized this was an "oh shit" moment of history.
ReplyDeleteThat was back in legacy America before the Long March turned into a track meet and the Great Leap Potato.
ReplyDeleteA lil' shaver in school, they interrupted class to tell us, long before the 24-7 enemedia dumbing down.
God has to remind man every now then to read the whole thing.
Thanks! That was very enlightening. Nemo
ReplyDeleteGood stuff. Have seen a few documentaries on this
ReplyDeleteGary Rosenquist's 23 photograph series in the first 30 seconds is perhaps the most epic photographed capture of a natural event in all of the 20th century. Still impressed 40 years later.
ReplyDeleteI was 7 years old, living in Everett, Wa. My dad heard the eruption. A few days later, we had some ash. My dad collected it in empty bottles we had around the house. Even though the ash was very, very fine, it is quite heavy. We still have that ash.
ReplyDeleteYou got ash in Everett? Really? I didn't think any fell in western WA that far north.
DeleteI was a freshman in high school living in south Grant County, and we got 2+ inches. I still see that shit on the shoulder of the road in places.
Went to the St Helens area a couple of years ago. Man, was it amazing what the Volcano did! Dead trees everywhere, huge ash layers slowing being gouged out by water streaming from the mountain. Granted the new growth forest was impressive, the scale of just looking at was left of the mountain was incredible! I felt very small that day! When I was serving in the Coast Guard on a cutter out in the Caribbean, we did see the volcano erupt on Montserrat in 1997. That was very impressive. The ash cloud was creating static electricity, pretty crazy to see.
ReplyDeleteremind me again how much help w got from other countries?
ReplyDeleteWe were on a road trip. We visited Mt. St. Helens 24 hrs before the first eruption. The ash settled all over our car in the parking lot of a Calgary motel the next night.
ReplyDeleteWorked for the forest service as a comms tech out of the fire camp setup out of Trout Lake to fight fires in the red zone. Hiked, and flew in a helo, all over that area setting up and maintaining repeater sites for the ground crews. Lots of hot, hard, grueling work. Several very close calls and lots of fond memories as well.
ReplyDeleteAfter one of the eruptions we were standing around waiting to find out if we were going to have to evac the fire camp and wandered over to the catering crew van to grab some food. The ash was falling so heavily we couldn't eat our chow as it was covered in moments by the ash and it was like chewing on a mouthful of sand.
The fire camp was in the bottom of a valley. The antennas were on the top of Flat Top mountain. We had two legs of wire, one five miles long, the other seven miles long to get to the antennas. The boxes of radio wire were a quarter mile in length and weighed either 60 or 80lbs each, I remember any longer. I had a couple of fire crew members helping me layout the wire for the legs. We hiked in laying out a quarter mile at a time, three quarters mile in, three quarters mile out. Grab a new round of wire, hike in three quarters mile and start laying another three quarters of wire again. Hike out a mile and a half and grab another round of wire. Hike in a mile and a half and start laying wire again. Rinse and repeat for both lines. Probably should mention this was not flat land, but straight up and down getting to the position where the antennas weren't blocked by terrain.
The helo pilots were incredible in getting into and out of places trying to find sites for setting up gear. Sometimes in brutal conditions. One repeater we set up was at the old lookout site on Steamboat Mtn. Over the years since the lookout was abandoned the forest had encroached on the opening around the lookout. We didn't have a lot of space for the pilot to set down and keep the rotor tips clear of trees and the skids from being right on the edge of the cliff face.
cont...
wes
wtdb
It was a bluebird day and he set down with narry a bump. I got everything setup and just before leaving he said “Why don’t you put some ribbon or flags on those antenna guy wires so we have a visual next time we have to land here”. Well the next time we had to land there was in the middle of a major storm that had rolled in. We had crews in the field and our comms had gone down. I had set the repeaters so there was a delay in the squelch tails. By counting the squelch tails you could determine which site was down. The repeater site on Steamboat was the one that had gone down.
ReplyDeleteWhen we got to the site the ribbons were whipping around and flapping in the wind like an epileptic on crack during a seizure. “Do we really have to land there?” The pilot asked. Well we were required to keep comms up whenever we had crews in the field. He set us down and said “keep your head down when you’re out there because I’m not shutting this thing down, just backing off on the collective”. Just as I unbuckled and stood up to move to the door he shouted “Hang on were going over” and the wind took us off the edge of the cliff. I’ll just state that I’m still alive as a testament to his skills. A couple weeks later we heard that a pilot, helitack foreman, fire observer and comm tech at a California fire were killed in a crash caused by an almost identical set of conditions. Those pilots had balls so big they clanged when they walked.
A different eruption we flew past the St. Helens crater just minutes before the mountain went KFB again. It was a dicey few minutes as we basically ran before the cloud of ash blasting our way. Looking back at the cloud of ash and lightning it was like looking into the mouth of hell. Long roils of ash seemed to reach out as if to grab us. Our helo crew again saved our asses big time.
Another time we were on a no name knob north of the crater setting up a repeater site. The knob was so steep and pronounced that we had to land, unload our gear, then the pilot had to lift off so we could lay out our cables between our boxes and the antennas, then land again. There wasn't room to work around the helo otherwise. While we were bent over hooking things up we started getting buffeted by heavy rotor wash and thought the pilot was being an asshole playing a bad prank. We bitched at him over the comm set and he just said hurry up. While we were working the clouds had rolled in heavy. He was using the rotor wash to blow the clouds off the knob so we didn't go zero zero for visibility. We didn't find that out till later. As soon as we got set up and tested we hopped in and heard him talking over the radio to our little makeshift control tower that we had blue sky above us and visible ground below us. We took off and seconds later he told control we had gone zero zero for vis. Apparently if we were zero zero for vis before we took off he couldn't take off and he didn't want to sit it out (the socked in cloud cover) in the blast zone of the volcano. Like I expressed we didn't find some of this out till later.
cont...
wes
wtdb
The tail end of this particular story was the entire region had been socked in by the clouds. All we could see was Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams poking through the cloud cover to the north and east and Mt. Hood to our south. The area around Trout Lake, where our impromptu airfield and control tower lay, was completely invisible. Our alternate airfield was down near Portland and the pilot was concerned about fuel and they weren't really in any better condition for the cloud cover. The helitack foreman and pilot worked to triangulate our position and then had the guys in the tower tells us our bearing from them based on our rotor noise. Once we got into position we started settling down through the cloud cover with one of us partially hanging out each side door keeping any eye out for anything. This was with visibility measured in inches, not feet. Suddenly we lost contact with the guys in the tower and then fellow at the other door shouted ground and we were set down. The crew ran through the shutdown checklist and as the turbine noise faded away to nothing we got out to total silence. A couple of moments later we heard a voice in the mist shouting out at us. Later we found out we landed so close to the tower they thought we were going to crash into it and had abandoned the tower in fear.
ReplyDeleteAnother time we hit up the catering crew and asked if there were any gals that would like to see the volcano up close and personal. The girls rustled up some box lunches and I whistled up a helo and… well there are some things shouldn't be shared in an open enviro.
Man, this really took me back, like I expressed good times.
wes
wtdb