Mt. Fitzherbert

The little “Entering the blast zone” sign on the edge of the highway tells the Mount St. Helens revival story.

Twenty-five years after the volcano's catastrophic 1980 eruption, the boundary of the 230-square-mile blast zone is so lush with life that newcomers probably wouldn't notice it without a hint.

Before the devastating May 18, 1980 eruption, Mount St. Helens was considered to be one of the most beautiful and most frequently-climbed peaks in the Cascade Range. The peak's symmetric cone earned it the title of the "Fuji of North America," and nearby scenic Spirit Lake was a vacation area offering hiking, camping, boating, and fishing.

Geologists Dorothy and Keith Stoffel had chartered a Cessna flight over Mount St. Helens the morning of May 18, 1980. As their plane flew overhead, the mountain began rumbling and suddenly erupted. Believed to have been the closest to the mountain during the time of the eruption, Keith Stoffel managed to capture the moments before and after the blast on film.

Mount Rainier is considered a sleeping giant that will one day awaken. It's due for another major eruption after the last one 150 years ago.>/p>

“We would be concerned on Mount Rainier, even with the heating-up process, because even the little kind of deformation we're seeing at the dome crater floor could be enough to break off a chunk of mountain and then, combined with water, could produce lahar debris flow that would threaten downstream communities,” said Dr. Bill Steele, University of Washington seismologist.

The violent explosion of Mount St. Helens that captured the world news in 1980 had almost been forgotten and the number of visitors to the mountain – the tourists, climbers, hikers and campers – was declining.

But last fall the volcano began to wake up once again and with the new rumblings, tourists started to return in droves.

Climbing into a volcano is like entering a different planet. There may be blue sky above, but otherwise the surroundings seem alien.

Glacial ice and snow melted by the heat of hydro-thermal or steam vents reveal rock in muted shades of red, brown, black and gray. It can be a noisy place — the cacophony of rock and ice fall, joined by the loud hissing of steam jetting out of vents at speeds of one hundred miles per hour or more.