Helicopter ride: the ultimate OMG!

Our awe-inspiring Northwest has inflicted an awful impact on my golf game. Precious practice time has been spent instead wandering the woods, cruising the Gorge, combing beaches, hopping islands and gazing transfixed at leaping salmon, diving raptors and hour-long sunsets.

Strange, how so many people around here take all this for granted. In seven years I’ve seen more of the beauty that decorates this region than many long-time local residents have seen in 30 years. A friend confessed recently: “Silver Falls State Park east of Salem, Ore.? Yeah, I’ve thought about going there.” Dude, get off the couch! We’re talking 9-mile trail with 10 waterfalls, four of which you walk behind!

More than once I’ve written about the North Clark County Scenic Drive (http://www.clark.wa.gov/ScenicDrive.html) as well as the “Laird Loop” (Hockinson south to Northeast 139th Street, then east onto Rawson Road into the Cascade foothills, north past Larch Correctional Center, through the pastoral Dole Valley to Sunset Falls Road, past Lucia Falls, then across Heisson Bridge to Battle Ground.)

Of course, folks who have been to Johnston Ridge Observatory will swoon retroactively as they describe the spectacular view of the Mount St. Helens crater from just five miles away. On July 17, thanks to my wife’s creative thinking about my birthday present, I rode a helicopter into that hissing chasm, and for the 17th time in the past seven years I announced, “This is the most stunning view I’ll ever see, and I’m never going to change my mind!”

At least two outfits provide helicopter tours of Mount St. Helens. Applebee Aviation (http://www.applebeeaviation.com/tours.htm) offers three different rides starting at $149. My wife selected the $249 “Awesome Combo,” a 45-minute adventure that is inadequately named and under-priced. At Eco Park Resort on that mind-blowing Saturday afternoon, I joined two other thrill-seekers in a Bell 206B Jet Ranger piloted by Patrick Hall, who doubled as an amiable, expert narrator.

A valley of recovery

I had ridden in a helicopter several years ago but had forgotten how the takeoffs and landings can be so much smoother than what is experienced in airplanes. After fiddling with my head-set for a couple of seconds, I looked up to see we were 20 feet in the air, and I hadn’t even known we had taken off.

We soared exultantly up the Toutle River (North Fork) valley, past the elk reserve, noticing how life was returning rapidly to the pumice plain a mere 30 years after the cataclysmic blast.

Chopping our way toward the volcano, we gasped at the beauty of five snow-capped peaks, Rainier to the north, St. Helens and Adams in front of us, Hood and Jefferson to the south.

Then came the crater and, this time, a view not from five miles but from a few hundred feet. Captain Patrick pointed out scars of two landslides that had reshaped the crater in recent days, the growing lava dome marking the birth of a new mountain, steam venting from both the lava dome and the west wall, and the stark juxtaposition of a glacier tucked curiously among the smoldering, igneous formations.

Impressive, but not surprising. The surprising part came as we ventured north. Over the west shores of the reshaped Spirit Lake, I paid my respects to Harry Truman, who, when asked about the pending eruption by The Longview Daily News, snarled defiantly, “I think the whole damn thing is overexaggerated!” Today ol’ Harry, his pink Cadillac and 16 cats are believed to be entombed under 150 feet of what used to be a mountain top.

Gliding over the rugged Coldwater Creek headwaters, I gained a new appreciation of the magnitude of what happened on Sunday, May 18, 1980, the day 3 billion cubic yards of mountain moved at 600 mph, flattening old-growth forests for miles. Only from above can one fully understand the magnitude of that explosion.

Back down the Toutle valley we flew, past a half-dozen grazing elk. We marveled at the lush Cowlitz River valley to the north. Then delicately we descended into that best kind of landing, the kind you walk away from, muttering repeatedly the phrase that best defined the past 45 minutes: “Oh, my God!”

John Laird is The Columbian’s editorial page editor. His column of personal opinion appears each Sunday. Reach him at john.laird@columbian.com.