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 Leaving the I-5 freeway at Exit 49, Castle Rock Washington, you take the road you "land" on, Highway 504 (now renamed the "Spirit Lake Memorial Highway" and it runs some 50 miles into the mountain's blast zone. This is the first real view, still about 15 miles out. The mountain's top is shrouded in cloud to the right, and before you is the valley filled with 200-300 foot of ash and volcanic detritus. |
 Our Taiwanese cultural student Anita Tai (Tai Ying-Chia) is no more afraid of heights nor less confident of balance and coordination than I! I might note, there's a tremendous view from where she is, looking over the tree-tops just a few feet away to the valley a thousand or more feet below! |
 Sigma 17-35mm lens on my full-frame Nikon D3. You can see the end of the "deck" of the Visitor's Center to the right. The plain below is several miles wide, 300-500 feet below the cliff in front of me ... and those gullies in that plain are 100-300 feet deep mini-canyons! |
 The 17-35 Sigma at 21mm ... the equivalent of about 14mm on most "normal" sensor-size DSLR's. The plant is about 5 feet away, and a couple feet beyond that is a cliff-face down to the volcanic plain. Note the light-grey color of the "ground". Volcanic ash covered EVERYTHING for miles around, as noted, the "plain" out there is 200-300 foot or more deep of it, and it is very reflective. |
 This is at the 17mm setting on the lens, and note the difference in effect between the vertical image and this one, from the same spot, nearly the same "coverage" in focal-length. The vertical image tied the foreground and the looming mountain together, but this horizontal image implies a great deal of distance between the foreground and the receding and far-less-imposing mountain. Yet the distances are the same! |
 Out to the 35mm limit of this lens, starting a series where I will zoom in to the mountain. Note the major difference in the apparent distance to the mountain going from 17 to 35mm on the lens ... |
 Now using the awesome 70-200mm f2.8 VR Nikkor lens at 70mm. Closing in on the mountain, past where virtually any sizable plants grow and so all there is to see is light-grey ash, there is less contrast than before, even though this lens is known for it's wonderful sharp contrast. Those gullies, remember, are really 200-300 feet deep. And the entire "plain" covers the old landscape several hundred feet below it. |
 At 200mm now ... can you see, just below and to right of center, the helicopter giving a tour through the canyons and features of the "new" Mt. St. Helens? It's probably two miles away from me at this point. That's one of those "little" gullies it's flying through. Not much contrast even with the "contrast" setting in Lightroom cranked a bit! |
 Wife Miriam IS a Macpherson, after all ... which means, there MUST be a hike! With my right foot still painful and mangled (soft-tissue damage in the arch and balls of the foot) I didn't go along. (Though several days later the walking I did do to get these pics has me still in pain ...) The Three Hikers heading out are Anita with the red sweatshirt about her waist, Lars, and Miriam headed east and a little south from me. |
 There are miles of trails in the monument, and there they are just a little past where there were in the last shot ... but here, you see the devastated hills that once were covered in dense forests. ALL off the trees in this area were blown flat to the ground like toothpicks in the first couple minutes by the blast as the mountain's north/northeast face blew laterally towards these hills. |
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