Part 3 of 3
I also crossed Windy Ridge before Mt. St. Helens lost 2,000 feet in elevation, on the way to explore lava tubes created “way, way back” in geologic time — of only 200 years ago. At YMCA Camp Mehan we were taught to avoid the “dimples” of dead trees surrounded by pumice from previous eruptions that had rotted away, leaving a deep hole that might have deceptively been filled with loose forest duff. At 40,000 years young, as volcanoes go, this sleeping lady he has erupted 14 times in 4,000 years alone.
I am also certain that Spirit Lake has been formed, and reformed, many times in the past. Here is 1/60th of a second of my lifetime association with the “old lake”, done in a transparency where digital re mastering was able to handle the dynamic range of a difficult media meant to be projected.
There was no road to the camp built on the patented claims of the Coe Mine that produced at least enough copper to cast a statue standing in Portland, Oregon’s Washington Park, called “Coming of the Whitemen.” Ore had gone out across the lake by boat, and that is how, years later, young campers were brought in — towed in war surplus lifeboats.
I learned to canoe upon this lake, which must have had something to do with kayaking the length of the Yukon River (www.AlaskaTravelMagazine.com). We also used to, after taps, “borrow” a lifeboat to row across for a clandestine, non-YMCA sponsored, visit to a Girl Scout camp — yet another learning experience. One high school spring break I led a small group of ski mountaineers in bear trap bindings across a frozen Spirit Lake to “borrow” an open face camp shelter for the night, before traversing Mt. Margaret.
One of my companions of those days has lived out his allotted days on this earth. He was the one who had the nerve to sass back a real life Harry Truman, who Hollywood suggests was a “loveable old character.” Now that I am age to qualify as a character, I have to tell the truth that I am not sorry that Truman, a
grumpy old man that hated kids, is gone.
Who I do miss is Robert Kaseweter, a geologist I spent a couple months with in a wintertime Alaska Range. History has Bob listed as an amateur volcanist who had “volunteered” to be an unofficial observer from his girl friend’s Spirit Lake cabin — much closer to the mountain than what is know today as Johnston Ridge, named for the U.S.G.S. geologist whose last words were a radioed, “Vancouver, her it comes.” Knowing Bob’s fascination with things volcanic I am absolutely certain he died instantly shouting out, “Wow-w-w-w!”
This is why I suggest waiting for Gifford Pinchot Forest Service Road 99 is free of snow —late May to October?— and experience geologic time for yourself. Bob’s body was never recovered, but standing on Windy Ridge looking down on the new lakeshore, replacing the old, I for one thought I could still hear his “Wow,” echoing across the Spirit Lake basin.
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