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New exhibits detail story of volcano’s reawakening

By Kathie Durbin
Published: May 14, 2010, 12:00am
2 Photos
Monument scientist Peter Frenzen discusses a panoramic mural depicting the Mount St. Helens crater.
Monument scientist Peter Frenzen discusses a panoramic mural depicting the Mount St. Helens crater. It's one of the new exhibits that will greet visitors to the Johnston Ridge Observatory beginning Sunday. Photo Gallery

JOHNSTON RIDGE — A lot has changed on Mount St. Helens since 1997, when the Forest Service opened the Johnston Ridge Observatory, offering the public jaw-dropping views into the volcano’s crater at the end of a 53-mile paved road from Castle Rock.

When the observatory opens to the public for the season Sunday, updated exhibits will tell the story of the volcano’s reawakening in September 2004 after nearly two decades of quiescence and the period of rapid dome-building within the crater that continued until January 2008.

On Oct. 2, 2004, about 2,400 visitors to the observatory were evacuated as the volcano rumbled to life.

During that reawakening, about 125 million cubic yards of lava erupted onto the crater floor to form the new dome — enough to pave seven highway lanes three feet thick from Portland to New York City.

The volcano has been quiet since.

One exhibit displays the seismic activity recorded during the early part of the dome-building period, as the mountain was shaken by harmonic tremors and days of regular drumbeat earthquakes.

Another shows seismic activity on the mountain in real time on a digital screen. It replaces the paper drum on which tremors were recorded in the old exhibit, although the original seismograph is still displayed as well.

An interactive exhibit sure to be a hit with kids allows visitors to place their hands on a screen and experience simulated seismic tremors registering a range of ground disturbances, from elk walking nearby to an earthquake halfway around the world.

Another exhibit attempts to answer perhaps the most-asked question about the volcano: When will it erupt again?

It explains how scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey use remote cameras, earthquake activity, gas monitoring and deformation of the ground inside the crater to monitor the volcano’s behavior around the clock.

One long wall features a dramatic black-and-white panorama of the crater photographed by Seattle landscape photographer Will Landon using a large-format camera. The view takes in the original dome, the new dome and the new glacier.

Landon photographed the east face of the crater wall in the morning and the west facing wall in the late afternoon to reduce the effect of shadows.

There are rock samples from different eruption periods, and exhibits showing how different kinds of lava power different kinds of eruptions.

New video screens, donated by Toshiba, will allow visitors waiting in line to get into the theater to take a three-minute video tour of the monument. Entitled “Mount St. Helens: It’s More Than a Day,” it’s designed to encourage people to visit the east side of the mountain as well, said monument scientist Peter Frenzen.

“There are a lot of days when you can’t see the mountain, but the videos allow you to see the crater,” Frenzen said.

In all, about $350,000, including in-kind contributions, was invested in the new exhibits, Frenzen said. Federal stimulus money paid for some of the updates. The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust contributed $150,000 and the Ben Cheney Foundation contributed $25,000.

A ceremonial groundbreaking will be held this weekend to mark the beginning of work this summer on a new $400,000, 160-seat amphitheater that will rise in an open area just west of the observatory. The long-delayed project will be paid for with federal stimulus dollars.

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