Today is the 34th anniversary of Mount St. Helens erupting in 1980. The St. Helens area is about an hour from my house and is one of my favorite huntin, flying and hiking destinations. The Portland newspaper published a few good articles online about pilots who over flew the eruption and provided some pretty cool photos, some not seen until recently. Try that now days and I bet there would be a giant TFR overhead.

http://www.oregonlive.com/mount-st-helens/
The aircraft in the second article is visible in photos taken by the first pilot.

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2014/05/mount_st_helens_eruption_pilot.html

When I used to work for Weyerhauser we took an overflight of the blast zone in their helicopter. The contrast between the land intentionally reforested and land withing the National Monument is pretty neat.

Appropriate:

http://www.backcountrypilot.org/forum/topic/all-alone-as-the-mountain-blew-628

Yup, that's just the way I remember it looking except I could see huge blocks of rock flying out from the peak just under the mushroom.

Hard to believe it's been 34 years ago. Time flies when you're having fun, right?

Cary

As a test of your early bush flying literature / publications:

Does anyone remember what model of plane S. Horton was flying the day St Helens blew?
As I recall, he claimed it was his favorite plane, at least at that time.


EDIT Looks like I should have opened the link first. Gave my copy to Gump or Zzzz

Curious

Chris C