It stands 8,364 feet, is visible from countless locations throughout Clark County, and occasionally lets out a belch to remind us that it’s there.
Yet Mount St. Helens sometimes is treated like a grandfather clock in the living room — big and omnipresent and so familiar that it becomes easy to ignore. Despite being one of the richest venues for stunning vistas and geological education on the continent, the mountain can be relegated to afterthought status in the minds of the locals.
That is, unless the Mount St. Helens Institute has its way. The institute, a Vancouver-based non-profit organization, is dedicated to education and conservation projects related to the mountain just northeast of us.
And some people have noticed. The institute recently was honored by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar with a Partners in Conservation Award.
Among the projects cited in the awarding of the honor: Volunteer interpreters provided for visitors around the volcano; a “Volcano Views and Brews” monthly lecture series; a Volcano Explorers Program, in which scientists connect with fourth- and sixth-graders through video conferences; a “Volcano After Dark” program, an overnight opportunity for youth and school groups; and guided hikes and group climbs around the mountain.
In short, the Mount St. Helens Institute — which collaborates with the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Forest Service — is bending over backward to provide knowledge and increase understanding of an extraordinary natural resource that is right in our backyard.
That is invaluable. As Carolyn Driedger, a USGS scientist, told The Columbian earlier this year, the mountain is “the most important volcano for study in modern times. St. Helens trained hundreds of volcanologists who then dispersed around the world to work on eruption hazard assessments and eruption response.”
Because of that, it can be considered a disappointment if the locals (and their visitors, who typically jump at the opportunity to visit the volcano) don’t take advantage of opportunities to understand the mountain. Such understanding doesn’t just mean a working knowledge of magma and pyroclastic flows. It also includes fun facts:
• More than 13,000 people climb the mountain each year, according to the institute. That’s an average of more than 35 a day. In the spring and summer, of course, the activity on the mountain’s trails soars.
• From October 2004 to late January 2008, approximately 125 million cubic yards of lava erupted onto the crater floor to form a new dome. That’s enough to pave a seven-lane, three-foot-thick highway from New York City to Portland.
• For the past 4,000 years, Mount St. Helens has erupted roughly every 150 years.
That information is readily available on the Mount St. Helens Institute website at http://mshinstitute.org. But simply reading about the mountain cannot replace the visceral experience of getting an up-close view of the geological wonder.
For most local residents, Mount St. Helens thrust its way into the psyche on May 18, 1980, when a violent explosion lopped 1,300 feet off the top of the mountain and spewed volcanic ash throughout the Northwest. The mountain introduced itself to a new generation in the past decade with a series of mini-eruptions.
Throughout that time, it has provided a virtual laboratory of living science, providing lessons in volcanology and the awesome power of nature to regenerate itself. And that, as those at the Mount St. Helens Institute know, should chime more loudly than a grandfather clock.
