| Possibly the last climber to climb Mt. St. Helens before the historic eruption of May 18th, 1980 Trip Report |
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| Possibly the last climber to climb Mt. St. Helens before the historic eruption of May 18th, 1980   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Washington, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 46.19140°N / 122.1933°W Date Climbed/Hiked: Apr 28, 1980 | Page By: cowlitz Created/Edited: Feb 1, 2006 / Apr 23, 2006 Object ID: 170824 Hits: 4978 Loading... Page Score: 86.11% - 17 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
My trip report starts with me watching the movie, "The Mountain", with Spencer Tracy, and Robert Wagner, as a kid.
After seeing that, I said to myself," I am going to have to climb a mountain when I grow up".
March 1980.
I am watching the news in my barracks at Camp Le Jeune North Carolina, and a report comes on the Nightly News.about Mt. St. Helens erupting in Washington State. I told my buddies standing by, that "I was going to climb that mountain". They looked at me like I had lost my mind. Again.
[ I "Hitch- hiked" to Alaska accidently once, in 75. I was going to Oregon, and got a ride to Anchorage Alaska ].
I was scheduled to get out of the Military in one week. I couldn't wait to get out and climb it. I wanted to photograph the crater and maybe sell the pics to National Geographic. As Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a Maroon".
I got out ,and started to prepare for the trip. I started to hump up and down a steep hill behind my Dad's house, wearing a 66lb. pack. I had someone make me a white camoflage snow suit so I wouldn't be seen on the snow. [ A $600.00 fine, and 6 months in jail, awaited anyone caught inside the "Red Zone" ]
I couldn't find any maps of the area, other than a Rand Mc Nally Road Atlas. I found one photo of St. Helens in an old National Geographic. And some others in the "Tabloids" that had the mountain as front page news.
I thought initially, that I would climb the north face.Because I had read in an article, that the Forest Service was monitoring the mountain with a telescope, from Cougar in the south. I tried to get my brother to go, he said he couldn't go for another 2 weeks. I couldn't wait, the mountain was calming down, I didn't want to miss the activity. He steered me to a Rock Climbing friend of his, who claimed he was the "2nd best Rock Climber in the the state of Missouri. [ Most liars hardly ever claim to be second best . Right?] He told me it couldn't be done, and he didn't want to go. [He was the biggest windbag in the state.]
My Dad was worried I'd be killed. He tried to discourage me. I just told him," I just had to do it." It was strange, when I told him that, he looked at me like he understood. And began to help me prepare.I had no job because I had just been released by the Military. So that meant I had very little money.
I had to get a Bus ticket to Kelso Washington. I was a sight to be sure. I looked like Indiana Jones, before there was any Indiana Jones. [That's one of the reasons you should never take the bus. There's always strange people on board.] On the way out on the Bus, I sat next to a Professor of Geology, from the University of Oregon. he filled me in, on what I might expect. He told me about a couple of his friends who had been killed in South America in a Volcanic eruption.
I got to Kelso Washington and discovered that I should have bought a ticket to Longview. I told the driver I needed to go to Longview instead. He said "Too bad, your ticket is for Kelso". I asked him again, and for some reason he said ok.[ I must have looked every bit as desperate as I was.]
I got to Longview only to discover no one would give me a ride. Instead they would catcall me, and call me 'Hippie". I got discouraged, and walked down to a bridge, over a fair sized river. I was totally discouraged and feeling very foolish indeed. I decided to give up and go home in defeat. I trudged toward the direction of the Bus station in Longview. A girl in a Camaro stopped, and gave me a ride, I told her what I was doing, and she said, she knew some people who could get me to the mountain.
We stopped at Porky's Tavern in Longview and had a couple of drinks. I bought a Tee Shirt there, that said "Where were you when Mt. St. Helens blew?" She then took me to her friends farm out in the sticks. They were truly Hippies. [They looked like the Manson Family.] I spent the night at their house, and after breakfast, they took me out to the mountain.
Well sort of.... They took me to a spot about 5 miles away from the mountain on some logging road. We went down many a road, before they hit on the one they dumped me off on. Before they dropped me off ,they had to pull a very large tree out of the road with their School Bus and some logging chain.[the tree had fallen due to the earthquakes] They had a School Bus converted into an RV / Earthmover. It even had a pot bellied stove in it. One time, they got on some logging road that had old snowpack on it. The bus started to slide off the road, and was about to fall 80-90 ft. All I could think about was that pot bellied stove landing on top of me. They asked me if I had any climbing gear, and "I said, no". They said" You'll never make it." When they dropped me off, I heard one of them say.... "You can't mess with Mother Nature".
. A line of cars had formed behind us, waiting for the tree to be removed. [sightseers mostly]. After they dropped me off, I was again discouraged. 5 miles in the mountains with a 66lb. pack, might as well have been half way to the moon. I hiked up the road to the top of the ridge, and met a couple who were scouting out the Elk hunting prospects. They shared their lunch with me. And I told them what I was up to. They thought that was pretty cool. So they offered to take me to the road block on the highway, and draw me a map of the area, and of the trails I would need to get to the mountain. He was an Engineer with the Washington Department of Transportation, [His name was Gerald P. Edwards]. She was his girlfriend. [Her name was Mary Legre]. So if you two are reading this, please try to contact me.
They let me out at the roadblock. a Sheriff's Deputy saw how I was dressed and said... "I know what you are here for ,and if I catch you inside the Red Zone, I am going to burn you". My friends said "Hop in, we'll take you down the road, you can hike around the roadblock.". That's what I did.
I was camped near a small stream that ran into a larger stream. I had just taken a bath in the cold stream,eaten, and had slid into my sleeping bag. When I heard something moving through the woods. My first thought was, a bear is coming to check out the smell of my food. I didn't want to get out of my nice warm bag and deal with that. Tree limbs began to fall, and the trees began to sway and creak, the ground began to surge in waves. It was like being on an air mattress on an ocean swell. I was terrified. I had never been in an earthquake before. My eyes must have been about as big as silver dollars. I could just see a wave of lava moving down the valley to consume me.
The next morning I got up before dawn, it was drizzling. I moved down the highway as fast as I could, to the logging road that led to Blue Jay Trail. I went a little ways down the logging road to a large boulder that had "Blue Jay" painted on it with an arrow pointing the way. [ The photos of the "Climbers Bivouac taken by "Chuckwagon6" looks alot like that area. ]
I went about half a mile, and the trail was covered with snowpack. It was wet and "crunchy", [like a "Sno-cone"] I would walk 2 or 3 steps and fall through up to my hips. After a few minutes of this I was soaked from the waist down. Imagine doing this with a 66lb. pack on your back. Everytime I would fall through, I would have to remove my pack, and climb out. It was exhausting. After a while, I discovered if I stayed close to the drip line on the trees, it was frozen harder there, and I wouldn't fall through.
I saw a ridge that looked like it might be a shortcut to the Treeline. I started up with my pack on my back. After about 30 minutes of this I was exhausted. I also saw the danger I was in. The ridge looked to be gently sloping when I started, but now it looked straight up and down. I was about 60ft from the bottom and I knew if I slipped, I would fall and possibly break a leg or something. I had that 66lb. pack on my back, to add to the damage. [ I had no Ice Axe, or Ice Hammer,and no Crampons, nothing}
I did make it to the top, but I was spent, I just sprawled out on my back and heaved in air. Thanking God I didn't fall. I looked around thinking I would see the mountain. It wasn't there!
I was frantic, I was lost. Where did the mountain go? How could I lose a 9,000ft. mountain? The only thing I can figure is.. mountain perspectives can be decieving. Maybe the ridge I was on, sloped up gradually, but looked flat, obscuring the mountain. I found another way down in a rock and gravel filled gully. I let my pack go down first ,so it would stop my fall,if need be. When I got to the bottom there was an Elk carcass that had been picked clean.
I remember thinking, this is going to be me, most likely.
I went around the ridge and saw a route to the tree line. I hiked for about an hour and noticed the wind was starting to pick up and the sky was looking more and more leaden.It felt like a storm was coming. I found a small rock cairn under some pines on a small ridge next to a trail. it looked like an Elk trail. I laid my sleeping bag out under the trees on a bed of pine boughs, and covered it with a Space Blanket, slid into the bag and went to sleep.
When I woke I thought it was night. It was dark . My feet were wet and cold. It had snowed during the night, and had buried me. I pulled the Space Blanket off to discover, that the clouds were breaking up and and the Sun was coming out. Snow was in the air like a cloud of millions of little window panes catching the sunlight. it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
I got out of my bag, got dressed and started for the tree line, I walked for about 30 minutes and, low and behold, there was the mountain. Man it was beautiful! A snowfield streched out toward it, like a highway. The clouds were breaking up , and you could see it against the blue of the sky.Through the holes in the clouds. Really bright! Glowing! I walked up the snowfield to a point where 2 fingers of snow stuck down into the trees.[you can see it on satellite photos]
I spent the rest of the day observing and looking for an easy route.[ I want to add here, the reason I had decided to go up the south face was because I had heard on the radio, at the farm, that the northface was swelling at the rate of 10ft per day.]
I woke up about midnight, and started to get ready to go. The moon was full and bright. [My dad told me later, that he went out on his deck back in Missouri, and looked at the moon, and turned to my Mom and said.... John's on the mountain tonight"] My boots were frozen solid, so was my pack. I got some dead branches off the bottoms of the pines, and started a small fire to thaw my boots so I could get them on. I had a large knot of pine resin, I had collected under the trees, at the cairn, I threw that on the fire, it blazed nicely after that..
I got everything together that I was going to take, not much, a 1 quart canteen, and my little Pocket Pentax Auto 110 Camera.
The moon was shimmering in the heat from the volcano, that was eery. The snow was frozen hard, and with the ash and other debris ejected from the volcano, it was a good gritty surface to walk on. [ Kind of like "No-Skid Tape on stairs ] The climb was easy at first , but got harder and harder with time. I ran out of water really fast. That was the worst part of it. I was trying to gain as much altitude as I could before daylight, so I could avoid detection while ascending. Again... What a Maroon!
I remember seeing Portland Oregon's lights shimmering in the distance. It looked like a Forest fire on the horizon.
It seemed strange to me, being out in the sticks alone like I was.
Near dawn I stopped to rest by some large rocks. I figured I could hide there if the Helicopter came by. An earthquake hit it rattled the rocks some. Some of them were as large as a small car. The mountain would squeak during the earthquakes.
I discovered these potato chip looking things, that kind of stood up on pedestals of ash. They were clear with a few tiny rocks in them . I would put these in my mouth and suck on them for moisture. I stopped at the top of a particularly steep section I had negotiated to rest. Again another earthquake. this time the heaving felt as if it would throw me out, and back down the way I had come.
The Helicopter was coming over quite frequently now, about every 30 minutes or so. I had come to a section of the mountain where the hot mud had cut 3ft. furrows in the ice. Rocks about the size of footballs that were thrown out by the previous eruptions, had lodged in these furrows, forming dams. When the pressure of the mud would break these dams, the rocks would break loose and bounce in large archs down the mountain. I could hear them coming. Thump, Thump, Thump. Then came a river of mud and rock, looking like cement fresh from the mixer. I call it mud, but it wasn't mud in the traditional sense it was ash.
These troughs were beneficial to me because the mountain was fairly steep here and I could stand in them hold on to the sides and climb. Sometimes I would have to hop to another one, to avoid the mud flows. At one point the helicopter came really close to where I was and hovered. I laid down in the mud and pulled my hat over my head. I was sure I had been spotted. I woke up, I don't know how long I had slept, but the helicopter was gone. Carly Simon's song "I haven't got time for the pain", kept going through my head.
Near the summit,the Helicopter came back again, there was a 6ft.deep slump, about 60 ft. long, on the slope filled with ash. I dived into that. An earthquake hit at that precise moment. I was lying face down in the slump. Right in front of my face, a 1 inch crack was opening and closing. I was thinking, remembering those old "B" grade Sparticus type movies, where the earth opened up and swallowed people. Ha, Ha. There were also pencil sized fumaroles here venting steam.
After the helicopter left, I made a scramble for the top. I think the time was some time after noon. I'm not sure. I saw a 2 , 1/2 ft. conical fiberglass disc with some wooden stakes north of it. They had Day-Glo orange tape/streamers tied to them. If there are any of our USGS survey friends reading this, perhaps you could tell me what that disc was? If it was earthquake monitoring equiptment. I wonder how many of the earthquakes monitored that day, were due to my walking near this disc.
I took photos of different views on the summit, and photographed the crater. I had thought originally, of going down into the crater. But by this time, I was pretty tired. I also thought, there might be poisionous gases in the crater that could overwhelm me. I had also originally planned to go visit Harry Truman. I liked his attitude. But again, I was tired. [ I wish I had now.]
I plunge stepped it back down the mountain as fast as I could. I wore holes in the backs of my boots doing this. [Abrasive ash.] When I got to the tree line it seemed to be about 1500 hours. I could not find my pack and I was kind of disoriented from hunger and thirst. Panic time again! I found my pack after some frantic searching. I had walked past it, several times. I was extremely thirsty. I could not find any stream, there was not any snow melt there, and I was too exhausted to go any further to look.
I noticed where the dark ash was, the snow had melted into holes. I had a plastic trash bag with me so I laid it out on the snow and dug a small trench leading to the hole my canteen was in and piled some snow on the bag. It melted pretty quickly. I got some water in me and immediately my mind became sharp again. I learned the value of water that day. I camped that night and hiked out toward the highway. As I was coming out of the woods I was stopped by two grungy looking characters with Forest Service hats and shirts on. They asked me what I was doing there?
I played stupid, [back then, that was something I could pull off fairly easily]. I told them I was from Missouri, and had come out to Washington State to do some backpacking. I had gotten a ride with some folks who dumped me off there as a joke. I had been lost for 2 days. They said don't you know you are in the Red Zone? I said what Red Zone? They said, "Don't you know about Mt. St. Helens erupting?" I said what ! They said "Yeah, there's a mountain right over that ridge that could blow at any time". I put on my flatlander terrified look", and said, "How do I get out of here"? And, "if I ever get my hands on those people I'll kill Them!" They pointed the way I was going, shook their heads, and blended back into the woods.
After going around the roadblock, via the woods.. I came out on the highway and found a young man playing "throw the stick" with his dog. He asked me if his dog could have a drink of water. I got out my tin cup and filled it up. [ I lost my cup there. My Dad painted in black paint across the side.." Mt Etna expedition 1980" With a picture of a volcano erupting,and my name] I told the kid what I had done, and asked him if he would give me a ride to the Portland Bus Station for a roll of my film. He agreed.
I got back home. I was kind of hoarse from breathing ash. [probably made small lacerations on my vocal chords].
I Called the news media and got my 15 minutes of fame. [30 minutes on one Station.] I had some funny things happen with the "News Media". One station billed me as a "Volcano Expert"
[ I'm sure David Johnston was rolling over in his grave]. Makes you wonder when you see an "Expert on TV, dosen't it?
Another station, in an "In Studio" interview, didn't realize I wasn't supposed to be on the mountain, until half way through the program. [ The interviewer found out, while I was "chit -chatting " with him during a "Commercial Break"]. His "Lead - In" after the Commercial was, "We are here with John Williams, who is "persona non grata" with the U.S. Forest Service.[Still am. ] I Gave some Ash, to one of the local TV "Weathermen". He used it on his weather report. Things like this go over big in Flatland.
Well that's my report. Please excuse the typos. I failed to take my wife out for dinner for her Birthday today, because I got involved with typing this. Let me tell you, there are things worse than volcanoes!
My Wife says, I'm going to get to re-live the joy of sleeping under the stars tonight. Wonder what she means by that? cowlitz / John Williams Images
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Cascade Volcanoes > Mount Saint Helens > Possibly the last climber to climb Mt. St. Helens before the historic eruption of May 18th, 1980
