Thirty-six years prior, that blown-out mountain back there mowed down this log, and millions of others, in a searing inferno of boiling-hot, debris-filled, EF5-tornado-strength wind survivable by no living thing. Many of these logs remain well-preserved because they were deeply sandblasted by fine, hot silica particles jammed with fierce force into every pore. Was this “weather damage”? You bet! Mt. Saint Helens created its own deadly, infernal outflow in a 9-hour Plinian eruption on that fateful day in May 1980. The cloud rising from the top wasn’t a real eruption (unlike a steam episode when we were there 10 years before), but instead dust being blown off the crater floor and walls by a strong north wind, then up and out of the south (far) side.
14 NNE Cougar WA (17 Aug 16) Looking SSE
46.2759, -122.2162