For the Love of Mountains

Story and artwork by Marianna Kearney.

This story was originally published in the 1980 Mazama Annual along with Marianna’s original artwork and seven photographs of the eruption taken by Ty Kearney.

“This is just like climbing up over a football!” I thought as I worked my way up Mount St. Helens on my first climb of June 24, 1945. Led by Don Onthank, this Mazama ascent was my second major peak and exciting because we were doing a new route – the Northwest Face*. That night under the moonlight, we picked our way along the sandy lip overlooking the yawning chasm of the Toutle. Our figures cast picket fence shadows in the pumice and the mysterious night air began to lose its chill as dawn drew near. 

Thirty-five years later my husband, Ty Kearney and I, sat comfortably in our van observing the west slope of the mountain, and the Northwest Dome where I retraced our old climbing route. But now it was a different mountain; the dazzling whiteness had been replaced by a kind of lunar barrenness and the peak looked grim with its powdering of dirty pyroclastics. With purple grey ash spilling down the light grey pumice fields, the mountain’s image had a strange reversed effect like a photographic negative. At this stage the eleven glaciers were ash covered; six feet had crumbled from the summit into the new crater on the northwest side. High up on that side a bulge of rock and ice, growing at the rate of five feet a day, was causing alarm. No one dared climb the peak now, nor were they permitted to. 

From our viewpoint, the Toutle Canyon was a focal point; another eruption could trigger a mudflow which would cause flooding down the lower Toutle; we watched this area with special care as we check-looked the mountain. We had volunteered to “volcano watch” for the State Department of Emergency Services, for a one-week mission. A part of RACES network (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service), we had been assigned to observe the west side from a logged-over area two and one half miles northwest of Goat Mountain. Eight miles from the summit on Road 5700 at 4,240 feet, we were perched high enough for occasional sleet and snow. It was May 13th. Our Van was parked just outside the red zone with a fine view of the mountain.** 

With nearly zero visibility, the first few days brought only fleeting glimpses of the summit crowned in new snow. We walked the soggy, ash-dusted earth and logging slash, admiring the fragile avalanche lilies or looked down on a logging operation in a tributary of the South Fork of the Toutle. We copied daily seismic reports originating from the University of Washington, relayed to the net by a “ham” station in Seattle. (Of the thirty “events” daily, only from seven to ten of them were harmonic tremors of over 4.0 in intensity.) The mountain seemed quiet. However on two separate nights we drove down to Yale Park, not only to seek relief from the chilling winds, but also as an “escape route drill.” Too, we had felt uneasy camping at night with no view of the mountain. 

On Friday, May 16th, we watched large private helicopters ferrying equipment out of hazardous areas. By Saturday, the 17th, a glowing sunrise had burned away the last shreds of the fog curtain and ushered in perfect visibility. The seismic report came in late but seemed routine. By afternoon, a series of dust clouds combined into a bright fleecy cloud which cast a deep blue shadow on the upper southwest slopes; on the opposite side the bulge appeared to warp the upper northwest skyline. 

The gash of the Toutle Canyon showed pinkish-grey in the flat light and all was quiet and bright except for wisps of steam issuing from the two upper vents near The Boot. For awhile a helicopter carrying geologists perched on the crater rim itself. A “ham” in Olympia called asking about avalanches in the Toutle. By late afternoon a new volcano watcher, Gerry Martin, had driven his motorhome to a location near Coldwater Peak, seven miles north-northwest of the mountain and about ten and one-half miles northeast of us. Via “ham” radio, we began to get acquainted with him when our first visitors of the week arrived for dinner. This included a friend outside shoveling up ash covered snow to take home. Their visit climaxed a full day and after they left we watched the mountain looming in a star sprinkled sky, seemingly peaceful. Then I remembered a remark about Mount St. Helens I’d just heard over the radio: “A watched pot never boils,” and I felt a little uneasy. 

Sunday, May 18th, arrived in a blaze of scarlet but with a light overcast. Visibility remained good however with Mount Rainier showing pearly white. It was 47 degrees F., with no wind. Between seven and eight a.m., Gerry and Ty discussed two small steam vents up near The Boot (“North 2”), a rock formation below the crater rim, on the northwest side. I was sitting on a folding chair sketching when the tranquility of the morning was shattered by Ty’s shout over the mike: “We’re in an earthquake!” (The time was 8:32) Gerry confirmed that he’d felt it too. (Later reports set the quake at magnitude 5.0). Less than one minute later I looked up to see a black cloud silently boil up out of the summit. “What an interesting show!” I thought as I watched a second large cloud being laterally blown out of the north side. Scarcely had the thought surfaced when enormous black clouds ballooned out. One of them spewing out huge rocks and glacial ice. 

Stunned, I watched convolutions, coalesce into a monstrous pall that enveloped the entire summit in a ravenous mass. Etched in silver, the velvet-black billows growled like distant muffled thunder and expanded at an incredible rate. Ty meanwhile had witnessed the lower part of the Goat Rocks formation slide away. The two young men (Robert Rogers and Frank Valenzuela) who had camped nearby had just zoomed out in a cloud of dust.*** Ty wondered if he dared take any pictures and still beat the cloud. He made a snap decision and took seven, hand-held. Over the radio we could hear Gerry’s voice, coming from the Coldwater Peak area, now in the path of the holocaust: “I’ve got to try to back out of here!” By now the black cloud, complex and banded with steam, had cascaded out in a lateral blast of unbelievable proportions, hugging the earth and racing at a speed of some 350 miles per hour. It then fanned out, engulfing not only Gerry but photographer Reid Blackburn and geologist Dave Johnston, also working in the area.‡ Ty then noticed that an edge of the black cloud was descending into the South Fork of the Toutle Canyon, our last protection from the exposed ridges we were on. “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!” he shouted. 

Slamming the van top down, we took off on the longest seven-mile ride of our lives. Though the car was under control we seemed to be flying at breakneck speeds over the rough forest roads. I knelt on the floor of the van, holding the radio on the tiny table, being showered by falling objects from a cupboard that had popped open over my head. Static screamed on the radio. Someone’s voice pierced the roar: “Which way are you going?” “South!” I answered, although for the first mile and one-half, our route had actually taken us eastward toward the volcano before it turned south.† For those terrifying moments we forgot communications as we faced the inferno of the exploding mountain.

Out of the van windows, death threatened us in the form of an ash cloud so immense it literally filled the sky. It was dirty-grey and suffocating with darker columns slowly rising to a billowing mushroom top. It was a monstrous mural rendered in pastels of swirling greys, deep, mysterious, and breathing terror everywhere. Swipes of lighter grey, some vertical, some horizontal, gave dimension to the hideous smoky chamber that now flashed with bolt lightning. It was almost beyond conception, an unimaginable evil, abstracting bizarre patterns of twisting smoke and hot gases ascending to the roof of Hell. In a race against time, our frail vehicle hurtled through a nightmare world dominated by the cloud that dwarfed everything by its sheer magnitude. The spindly alder trees near Fossil Creek swayed slightly before the churning greyness as we passed. Against the deep gloom, the pale sickening grey of the cauliflower column of the vertical eruption writhed upwards, carrying its load of ash and superheated gases. For a while, a blue car followed us, speeding down the road in its own private escape from a horror movie. Then it turned off, leaving us alone. The last thing I recall before we reached the relative safety of the Lake Merrill basin which lay below the exposed ridge, was a swelling dark grey billow, rimmed in sunlit silver and boldly edging the sky’s soft blueness. All was mercifully quiet – nearby a man on a motorbike had paused to take a picture from the bank.

We breathed silent prayers of thanks. The edge of the cloud appeared miraculously, steam whitened, rising gracefully like a fountain to a scalloped, saucer-shaped disc, softened by swirling effects and lens-like curves. The disc shape repeated itself in a lower cloud. At the junction of N818 with Highway 503, just west of Cougar and about twelve miles below our camp, we passed a roadblock, then bordered Yale Lake where people were driving toward the mountain to sightsee. Soon we were in green country again, climbing the rolling hills near Amboy on paved roads. Never had green and growing things looked so beautiful! Though church bells were ringing for Sunday School at Hazen Chapel near View, people remained outside watching the volcano in its biggest eruption in nearly 3,000 years, as it poured multiple pillars of ash and steam 66,000 feet into the hazy blue sky. We turned away from the black horror of a sunny day in May and drove home, experiencing a strong sense of unreality. We knew that people like ourselves had died in the terrible blast of our once serene Mount St. Helens. We had been allowed to live. We felt humble.

Author’s Notes:
*  See “Mazama,” Dec. 1945, pp. 72-73 and p. 91
**  Though I heard nothing except a low growl shortly after the first eruption, the initial “boom” was heard as far away as Penticton, B.C., 250 miles to the north. We also felt none of the tremors until the quake that set off the May 18th explosion. Perhaps it was the apparent silence of the giant explosion that contributed to its unreality.
***  The young men who preceded us out later reported that the area of our camp received only light ash but the gas cans we had abandoned in our hurry were very warm.
‡ Gerald (“Gerry”) Martin is still among the missing but presumed dead, since part of the ridge he was on was removed by the blast. Prior to his assignment in the Coldwater Peak area on May 17th, he had spent many hours of volcano watching in another location on the north side. Mazamas Bill and Jean Parker who also perished in the blast were located eleven and one-half miles northeast of our camp, and two and one-half miles northwest of Gerry. They were nine miles from the summit.
† We estimate that only about a half mile separated us from the blast cloud as we reached the point on the road where it turned from east to south. Though eight miles from the summit, our camp and the first leg of the journey out were about five and one half miles from the base of the mountain.