Bill and Annie's Excellent Adventure to Mt. St. Helens and the Ape Caves

~~~A Mountain to Climb~~~

On July 22, 2009, Bill and Annie Love climbed Mt. St. Helens in Southwestern Washington.

Annie was not yet two years old when Mt. St. Helens first blew its top off on May 18, 1980. Somewhere around our house, we have two viles of ash from the eruption, which we have kept for Willie and Annie.

The ash cloud blew hundreds of miles clear into North Idaho and through most of Montana, essentially closing down the Northwest for nearly a week.

It was an eerie time, to say the least. And, virtually every person around who experienced some aspect of the phenomenon will have a bagful of memories of that day.

In our case, we had my yearbook staff out for a picnic, and we were watching an air show at the airport next door. Suddenly, late that afternoon approximately eight hours after the eruption, an expansive deep purple cloud began to appear on the southwest horizon.

Yearbook kids scurried home, the air show ended, and people hovered in their homes, wondering what the heck we had in store as the ash cloud enveloped the area and cut visibility to a minimum.

We were out of school for most of the remainder of the year because deposits of ash everywhere caused havoc with buildings, transportation, etc. To say the Northwest came to a sliding halt that year would be an understatement.

Annie probably doesn't remember much of that time. She does remember, however, a family trip to Mt. St. Helens when she was about 13. That would be 17 years ago.

The Mt. St. Helens day she will never forget is the one she spent with her dad, climbing the mountain. Though it has lost some of the magnificence she saw last year while climbing Mt. Rainier, because of its blown dome, its drama provided a different kind of adventure.

Annie and her dad also visited the Ape Caves the day before their ascent on the mountain.

Bill snapped these photos. Enjoy. In addition, Annie has dozens of spectacular photos of this adventure and a Seattle Seafair pirate invasion at her Groundspeak office. All can be found at her Flicker website: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nnlove/)