Mt St Helen Photo

[CI]

I ran across this photo taken by Dick Lasher, who according to the story told by a co-worker, was running late, trying to get to Mt St Helen to witness the eruption.
Fascinating photo for sure.
If my position is correct, I would say he missed death by seconds.

https://vintagenewsdaily.com/the-story-behind-one-of-the-most-striking-photos-of-the-mount-st-helens-eruption-after-40-years/

I have pondered where exactly he must have been located in order to be this close to the eruption, and yet survive it.
I started looking on various maps, satellite views, etc., and using street-view to travel down the path along the east side of Mt St Helen, to find a spot where the terrain matched the photo.

After looking for months, I was not really coming up with a good match.
There is a very steep hill on the left, and a valley visible through the V-shape in the road ahead.
The mountain appears due west of his car.

Finally I remembered that g-earth had 3D views, and so I started searching roads to the east of the mountain.
I found one someone good fit that was pretty much due east of the moutain, but there was not a view through the V in the road of the valley beyond.

I moved one ridge over towards the west, which seemed to be to be in an unsurvivable area, and got pretty much a perfect match for his photo.
Tall ridge on the left with rock outcrops, and the valley in front visible through the V.
I figured he could not have been this close to the mountain and survived though, because the trees in the valley directly in front of his photo were flattened by the blast, and there were four deaths in the immediate vicinity of where he was, with temperatures estimated to be 680 F.

Then I read the narrative by his coworker, and it mentions that Dick was right at the edge of where the trees were flattened.

The narrative mentions that he turned around after the blast, and so that would have had him heading back towards the east, and downhill into a valley that had intact trees.
The four deaths in that area were on the west side of where he took the photo.

Talk about cheating death, and in a very dangerous exploding Pinto no less.

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[CI]

Here is where I think Dick took the photo.
I can't find any other areas that match the terrain in his photo.
Seems like his is in a survivable area, by a razor thin margin.

The lat long coordinates are in one of the screen captures, so this exact spot can be found on an online map that takes lat long, or whatever coordinates those are.

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[CI]

This is the death zone map, with the number of deaths in circles.
I suspect the fact that Dick immediately retreated down into the valley to the east is what saved him.

https://www.columbian.com/news/2010/may/18/interactive-map-mount-st-helens-eruption-victims/

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[CI]

This news cameraman appeared to be in the same general area as Dick Lasher, and judging from the video, he almost was asphyxiated by the dust and fumes.
I thought I did dangerous stuff with a hot foundry, but these guys won the lottery of life that day, and so narrowly cheated death.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO7DNs6LBBA" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO7DNs6LBBA</a>

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[crueby]

Oh. My.  Bet he invented some new words when he saw what was happening!  Amazing picture!

[CI]

I always wanted one of those Yamaha enduro bikes, but could never afford one when they were popular.

The Pinto was very dangerous.
Two individuals in my high school died from a rear hit in one of them.

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[wagnmkr]

That photo brought back some memories!! I was on a motorcycle ride with 5 other guys that morning. We had left Vancouver BC early and we were in the Chehalis Washington area having a comfort break when she blew. It was really loud and we had no idea what it was.  It didn't take long to find out what happened and the owner of the cafe came out and told us that we might not want to go much farther south at the moment.

Two of the lads kept going but 4 of us turned around and headed back home again. The two that kept going soon turned back as well.

For quite a while, you could buy pill bottle sized tubes of Mt St Helens dust almost anywhere in the Lower Mainland.

Thanks For The Memory

 

[Kim]

I remember that too!  The St. Helens eruption was quite the deal. There was "the big one" on May 18th, but there were dozens of minor eruption events for some time after.  You could often see a plume of smoke and ash coming out of the top of St. Helens.

We lived in the Portland area, which is south of St. Helens.  We didn't get the blast, but we got a TON of ash.

I have vivid memories of scooping buckets of ash out of the gutters of our house.  That stuff was really dense and heavy.  It was a very fine-powder ash so it really compacted together.  I didn't need to buy a bottle of ash.  We had buckets of the stuff! 

Kim

[wagnmkr]

Kim, we got very little ash up in Vancouver but I remember seeing the plumes from time to time. Something about the eruption was on the front page of the paper every day for quite a while. It was actually Portland we were headed to on that ride.

 

Tom

[bent]

I was living at home on our family farm near Maple Valley Washington, and the noise woke us up that morning (it was a Saturday and we were sleeping in a little).

Today we have an oil painting done by my late aunt, of the mountain before the eruption.  This hangs on the wall in our living room.  A year or two ago, I started doing the same kind of search that you did, CI, trying to find the location that the painting was made from.  Figured out eventually (by looking at historical photos as well as contemporary pictures) that it had been done from somewhere near an inn called Harmony Lodge, which then was on the shore but is now some 120 feet below the water level in Spirit Lake.  Today, Harmony Falls is the name of the only hiking trail in the St. Helens Monument area that allows you to hike to the current lake shore. So, took the camera and hiked there.  And met some gentlemen who had worked at the Boy Scout camp on the opposite lake shore, who confirmed that the painting had likely been done from near the Harmony Lodge, or at the Girl Scout camp a little farther north.  Either way, I made a couple of trips to that spot to get the morning light and best location that matched the painting and took photos.  Eventually chose one and had it enlarged at the copy store, that now hangs near the painting, a nice contrast of the before and after of the mountain. 

[CI]

I got interested in Mt St Helen when I discovered that steet view can often be dropped into locations that do not have roads.
There are spots all over the world, in some of the most obscure locations imaginable, and someone has trecked there with a good camera, and taken 360 degree panoramic photos.
Below are streetviews from the edge of Mt St Helen.
Fantastic panoramic views, and it is hard to fathom the scale of that much mountain just blasting out and up into the air.

I was also fascinated with the Pinto photo and the attached Yamaha enduro dirt bike.
I figured that Dick Lasher was close when he took that photo, but I never dreamed he was as close as he was to the death zone (right at the edge of death).

If I were younger, I would be making the hike to the top of what is left of Mt. St. Helen.
I hear the road is currently washed out to that area.
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[CI]

I have also studied the earthquake in Kobe Japan.
I live in a strange area of the US that is on top of a mid-plate fault zone (the New Madrid fault), and most folks don't know it, but this area has a worse siesmic rating that the worst area in California, and in fact this area is the worst seismic zone in the US (yikes, too near my house !)

Much of Kobe is like the sediment in this area, and I suspect that a good portion of this city will vanish due to liquefaction should we have another big one like occurred in this regin in 1811 and 1812.
I don't sit around and ponder such things, but I know we are overdue for a quake.
I do electrical designs, and the switchgear and other equipment have to be specifically designed and tested to withstand the seismic zone for this area (zone 4).
I do make it a point to live about 12 miles away from the river, and would never move closer than that.

I really need one of those automatic gas line cutoffs at my house, like they use in California.
It is not so much the quake I fear, but rather the fires that often occur after large quakes, like the one in San Francisco in 1906.
"Be prepared" as they say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811%E2%80%931812_New_Madrid_earthquakes

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