Only Lowit ✔ – The walk

I ran into Lowit (Mt St Helens) from the northwest. Dawn was breaking in a landscape only a little larger than me: it had been completely transformed by the volcanic eruption of 1980. A coniferous forest used to cover the northern slope of Loowit. The northern bifurcation of the Toutle River would have fluid between the mountain and I, draining the lake of nearby bucolic spirit. But the shock wave, the 1980 lahars and volcanic waste dried the forest and buried the river. I was looking at the gray and large extent of the explosion zone. The surface of Lake Spirit was still covered by a floating tangle of burned and bleached logs deposited by the explosion. But there were some signs of life that returned: the firs the size of a Christmas tree appeared from hummocks of volcanic debris that had settled and beaten in the last 45 years. The mud flows of a smaller eruption of 1982, and the subsequent rain and snowfall, had carved new sharp channels on Earth.

Life finds a path … 🦖

I spent the Johnston Ridge Observatory, named for David A. Johnston, the volcanologist who lost his life by monitoring the eruption of May 1980. «Vancouver, Vancouver! This is all!» He released the Office of the United States Geological Service on the radio just before the lateral explosion would sweep it. The road to the observatory was washed in 2023, and the empty parking seemed disturbingly post -epocalyptic. Each small seam in the asphalt flourished with a mossy disposition and wild flowers.

The first quarter of the Loop Loop took me through the explosion zone, but when I crossed the southern bifurcation of the Toutle River, the forest returned. Here I tried how the explosion zone should have been before 1980, with ancient firs and hemp cycles that rose on me, providing a welcome shadow. Both sides of the path shone with the rainbow of the branch of wild flowers Subalpine UNW: Lupin, Tiger Lily, Foxglove, Scarlet Paintmush, Western Columbine. Huge stems of extraterrestrial -looking bear grass were balanced in the breeze.

On the southern edge of the Lowit loop, I arrived at the crossroads with the Ridge monitor path to the summit. It was less than 2.5 miles to the mountain, how difficult could it be? I hid my bear boat and another camping team behind a stump and started walking. And up. And up. In approximately two miles, I had to climb about 3,500 feet. Not through carefully graduated curves, but through labyrinthly -shaped rock fields and traction -free ashes fields. The last quarter of Milla was especially spiritual. I could see the summit, and I was able to listen to people laughing in the celebration of reaching the top, but with each step I slimmed through the mountain on a steep sheet of fine ashes. I regretted not to pack the leggings for this walk: every few hundred feet, I had to stop to spill irregular pebbles from my shoes.

A view that is worth the blisters.

Finally, fucking as if it were the last mile of a marathon, I arrived on the edge and my exhaustion disappeared in an instant when a wonderfully icy wind hit me. The view towards the snow -covered crater, with Tahoma (Mt Rainier) and Spirit Lake that was coming in the distance to the north, was amazing. Even Wy’aesta (Mt Hood) through the Columbia River in Oregon was looking out, and another hiker told me that in the clearest days, you could see the center of Portland from here. It was also beautiful to see people of all ages and levels of physical aptitude that reach this summit, including a man who celebrates his 75th Birthday by climbing.

While enjoying the celebration talk at the summit, I realized that it was the strange man, everyone else was doing a day. My fellow hikers described, with delicious detail, the extravagant hot meals that would enjoy descending to the vivuac path of the climber about five miles away and returning to civilization. I realized that I still had many miles to cover that day, with a cup of cold rehydrated beans to enjoy as a reward. So back in the mountain I went to continue with her.

The rest of the southern side of the Loop Sended path remained mainly green and lush, with occasional rock fields to jump. The highlight was quite June Lake in the southeast corner, fed by a waterfall. Throughout the eastern edge of the loop, the views of Pahto / Klickitat (Mt Adams) were impressive. Reducing back to the northeast corner, there were many deep and steep channels of ashen and slippery grass to go up and down. In the rightly called Windy Pass, I went back into the explosion zone, I crossed the relatively flat stretching beyond Abraham’s plains, and I reincised on the Truman path pointing to the north. From here, I would connect with the trail of limits to continue my odyssey.

I had seen a version of the Lowit landscape totally different from what my grandparents would have seen. And the version I had seen soon would have gone, since the new trees continued to grow and the landscape continued to change, establishing and recovering from the impact of the explosion of 1980. Clearly, the only constant here (apart from the calluses in my feet) was the change.

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