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Mount St. Helens Hike (Part 1)

Mount St. Helens Hike (Part 1)

The hike at Mount St. Helens began at the Johnston Ridge Observatory on the north side of the mountain (with an $8.00 monument fee). Taking the trail heading to the east from the observatory you follow a ridge for 2.5 miles. Then you encounter Truman Trail which heads down into the mud plains and towards Spirit Lake. We stopped about 2 miles into the mud plain.

The whole hike takes you across barren areas of rock and gravel with views of trees flattened like toothpicks by the blast, past steep ridges facing the mountain, through areas of rock sprinkled with small patches of wildflowers, across a desert of ash dunes, and through the mud plain of rocks and small streams feeding Spirit Lake from Mount St. Helens snowmelt. These streams can be seen as waterfalls in Mount St. Helens's crater.

Mount St. Helens (Part 1) takes you along Johnston Ridge and down to the edge of the mud plains.

Patch of wildflowers that grow in the devastation

Once-forested hills wiped flat by the blast.

Spirit Lake from the ridge.

One of the strangely colored ponds in the mud plain.

Getting closer to Spirit Lake.

From green to gray.

Petals and stone.

Descending from the ridge to the mud plains.

Now see Mount St. Helens (Part 2) to continue the saga.

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