Again, as in 1980, the massive pyroclastic flow of molten lava surged down the upper slopes of the mountain, creating a terrifying nine-foot-high white-hot river of molten rock from the very core of the earth. It seemed to move slowly, but it was making 40 mph as it crackled and growled its way into Spirit Lake, burning everything in its path, wiping out the lake’s vegetation, boiling the water, sending hot steam up into the fog.
Of the campers on the north side of the lake and on the lower slopes of the mountain’s pine forest — mostly kids and college students — none had a chance. A handful of burnt dust buried deep in volcanic rock would be all that remained of the soldiers, in a cruel and sadistic war no one even knew was being fought.
The fog had cleared now around the little towns of Glenoma, Morton, and Mossyrock up on Route 12 and 508, and the pinnacle of Mount St. Helens could just be seen jutting up through the summit’s mist, belching fire and spewing thousands of tons of rock and red-hot ash hundreds of feet into the air.
It looked awesome, like many displays of nature too frightening to contemplate. But every man, woman, or child in those picturesque little Washington townships knew they were witnessing havoc, pitiless destruction, and heartbreaking loss of lives. Everyone who stood helplessly watching knew there would be many, many empty places at dinner tables tonight, all over the American Northwest.
The lava rolled over a total of fifteen cars parked around the lake’s perimeter, and the burning hot deposits of avalanche debris cascaded into the north fork of the Toutle River, almost damming it in some places. It completely blocked Coldwater Creek. A vast area of lateral blast deposits, thousands of tons of ash, spread over a distance of 200 square miles, choking rivers, burying forest and remote farmhouses.
The warm, sleepy Sunday morning of August 9 would be remembered forever throughout this lonely rural corner of the 42nd State, as Mount St. Helens, the towering snowcapped sentinel of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, suddenly, without warning, reared and destroyed the very land that gave it grace.
On that Sunday morning, those who had not witnessed the shocking 1980 eruption saw the real nature of the mountain. And it had little to do with grandeur or with the great silent peak that had dominated this southern part of the Washington State mountains — the bastion of strength, Queen of the Cascades.
This was the real St. Helens — a colossal 8,000-foot-high black, unstable pile of rotten volcanic rubble, spewing forth dark-gray burning ash, white-hot rock, black smoke, and lava, vomited up from the basement of Hell. And it was bent on burning everything it could reach.
Within minutes of the first major eruption, right after Scimitar-4, the fires began. Great hunks of molten rock and dense showers of red-hot ash were landing in the pine forests. The dead tinder-dry needles on the forest floor practically exploded into flame, and the trees took only moments longer to ignite. The inflammable resin inside the needles, boughs, and trunks of the Douglas firs popped and crackled into a giant, highly audible bonfire. From a distance, the blaze sounded like the eerie murmur of a battlefield.
Thousands of acres burned ferociously, spreading with terrifying swiftness before the west wind that billowed gently off the Pacific, dispersing the fog, fanning the flames. Every five minutes, there was another grim and furious roar from the summit, and another plume of fire and ash ripped into the powder-blue sky, and another obscene surge of magma rolled over the crater and on down the mountainside.
By 0830, every household, every car full of tourists, every truckload of outdoor sportsmen inside a 25-mile radius knew that Mount St. Helens had erupted. The radio stations were cobbling together news bulletins based on almost nothing except the incontrovertible fact that the damn mountain just blew its goddamned head off. Again.
Volcano experts from all over the area were being rounded up, electronically, and interviewed. All of them admitted to absolute bewilderment, and by 0900, radio and television newsrooms were desperate for information. The State Police had placed a ban on media helicopters, and it was impossible to get near the mountain.
The “experts” who were permanently monitoring the volcano were impossible to find, and the university study groups, collecting data in the foothills below the crater, were dead. Most of the observation posts to the north of the mountain were devastated, the buildings on the high ridges reduced to burned-out hulks, the low ones swept away by the incinerating magma.
Trees smashed by the blast leaned at ridiculous angles against the others that had withstood the explosion. These now formed enclosed, towering pyramids of volatile, combustible dry pine branches lit from within, as the fire raced across the dead needles on the forest floor.
From above, they looked like scattered furnaces, burning to red-hot flash points and instantly setting fire to anything made of wood and resin within spitting distance.
By lunchtime, the President had declared southwest Washington State a disaster zone and Federal help was on its way. The trouble with volcanoes, however, is that there are no half-measures, no wounded, no traumatized persons — and no witnesses. The fury of this type of assault on the planet is too formidable.
If you’re near enough to cast light on the actual event from a close-up position, your chances of survival are close to zero. It was no different at the base of Mount St. Helens on that Sunday morning…except for one big four-wheel-drive-vehicle that had been parked all night on the northwest shore of Spirit Lake. This contained a selection of sporting rifles, fishing rods, and four sportsmen, three of them local — one from Virginia.
The leader of the little expedition was Tony Tilton, a former attorney from Worcester, Massachusetts, currently President of the Seattle National Bank. Accompanying him was the legendary East Coast dealer of marine art Alan Granby, who had moved west with his wife, Janice, after a money-grabbing private corporation threatened to build a massive wind farm opposite their backyard on the shores of Nantucket Sound.
The third member of the party was another East Coast native, the eminent broadcaster and political observer Don McKeag, who had finally abandoned his show on a local Cape Cod radio station for a huge network contract that required him to live and work out of Seattle — the “Voice of the Northwest.”
The fourth serious sportsman in that accomplished little group was the big-game fisherman, duck hunter, and car racer Jim Mills from Middleburg, Virginia. They were on a weeklong hunting, shooting, and fishing trip, and they’d been camped by the lake all night, ready for an assault on the superb trout that made Spirit Lake their home.
There was one prime difference between these four and the rest of the sportsmen scattered around the lake in the warm summer months. Tony Tilton and his wife, Martha, had been cruising in the eastern Caribbean when the Montserrat volcano exploded in 1997, burying two towns, wrecking the entire south side of the island, and showering everything within 40 miles with thick, choking volcanic ash. Tony Tilton had stood on the foredeck of his chartered yacht and watched the towering inferno belch fire from the Soufriere Hills.
Etched in Tony’s memory was the speed with which the mountain unleashed its wrath upon the island. He had seen the blast, watched the roaring plume of burning ash and smoke burst upwards, hundreds of feet into the sky. Almost simultaneously, he had seen the great glowing evil of the magma begin its fatal roll down three sides of the mountain. A trained attorney, he had the lawyer’s grasp of facts, and the banker’s eye for the minutiae. In Tony’s opinion you had approximately fourteen minutes to get the hell away from that mountain or perish.
And now, twelve years later, on that early Sunday morning on the shores of Spirit Lake, Tony heard a strange and sudden wind, a wh-o-o-o-o-sssh through the dense foggy air above the water. Instinctively he had glanced up but seen nothing.