By Ken Hubbard
So there you are in Kelso, Washington and you don't have to be at the airport until 1:00pm the next day, what do you do? Oh yeah, it's also been raining pretty much for the past 4 days straight, I ask again what do you do? Well, if you happen to be with another professional landscape photographer, in this case Ed Heaton from PA, you will convince yourselves it's a great idea to wake up before sunrise and head out to Mount Saint Helen's. Since I've always wanted to see the blast zone area of this amazing place, it didn't take much to talk myself into getting up to see it. Even though the clouds where low and it was raining (of course it was) we still made our way up highway 504 which headed towards the Johnston Ridge Observatory. To tell the truth, for me there is a nervous excitement that surrounds places like Mount Saint Helens, the sheer magnitude of destruction that took place within a few minutes, is amazing to me.
On May 18th 1980, Mount Saint Helens erupted, creating a 5.1 mag. earthquake, collapsing the entire north face of the volcano, then a slab of rock and ice slammed into Spirit Lake, crossed a ridge 1,300 feet high, and roared 14 miles down the Toutle River, and finally a lateral explosion occurred and nearly 150 square miles of forest was blown over or left dead and standing.
Knowing these facts and getting our first few signs of destruction, we continued to march on, hoping the clouds would break. As the altitude started to rise, every now and then we would get a good glimpse of the valley and our hopes would rise and fall with every bit of bright light but then the skies would darken and clouds would impede our view. I was starting to convince myself that this trip was going to end up being a scouting trip, and there would be little to no chance of capturing anything worthwhile. Boy, was I wrong.
As Ed and I pulled into a vantage point just before the Observatory, we planned on stepping out for just a second then continuing on. I stopped my car and we looked out into the valley that led to the volcano, I got a familiar feeling, it was that feeling of being very small compared to mother nature. The clouds were moving extremely quick and in many different directions from the strong winds, slowly a small bit of the volcano started to show itself. Then, all of a sudden a burst of light filled the valley, it took us both by surprise and Ed's exact quote was "I think we better move quickly". We did, grabbing our gear, setting up and trying to fire off as many images as we could before the light disappeared. We were lucky enough to get about 10 minutes of shooting before the clouds took over and covered up Mount Saint Helens once again. If we were there 5 minutes earlier or 5 minutes later, we would never have captured what we did. No matter how much you plan or try and figure out every equation, luck still comes into play every now and then!
Comments