A Tale of Three Mountains: The Volcanic Landscape of the Pacific Northwest
This last summer, my roommate apparently had a lapse of memory. She forgot exactly how out-of-shape I was when she decided that it was a great day to go hiking up a "moderate" level trail at Mount Rainier. I was lucky to make it to the halfway point, let alone to the wide open meadow where we turned around, strewn with mountain heather and other assorted foliage. The trail she chose for us took us up an impressive array of landscapes and dramatic changes in our surrounding environment. My recurring joke was that if the hike didn't kill me, with my luck, the mountain probably would.
Thankfully, Mount Rainier wasn't feeling quite as active as its southern counterpart that day. As with many of my family road trips over the years, when we went within a 100-mile radius of Mount Saint Helens, we had to make the diversion. This was several years before I traversed the rather rocky hiking trail up Mount Rainier, so the image of the massive crater and mud-slide-marred landscape at the base of the volcano was forefront in my mind. The idea that that volcano, too, had seen the kind of outdoors tourism forty-one years ago that Mount Rainier still sees today is almost unthinkable. The disaster that occurred is so etched in our modern-day history that one cannot think about Mount Saint Helens anymore without thinking about a half-destroyed mountain.
Yet, unlike another of its neighbors on the Pacific Ring of Fire, the geographic occurrence that is Mount Saint Helens is still recognized as the peak that it once was. When thinking of a trifecta of Northwestern mountains, the typical standouts are Mount Rainier, Mount Saint Helens, and Mount Hood, but in keeping with the volcanic portrait and theme of disaster the Northwest presents us, I would turn to another (just as famous) site, though it is not often recognized for its identical origins. Crater Lake in Oregon is perhaps the most striking continuation of the chain of events this geography recalls. If Mount Rainier is step one and Mount Saint Helens step two, then Crater Lake stands as the most grand and ancient example of step three: what happens when this disaster is left to naught but myth and legend. Mind, this is a very loose example of a series, as each volcano has its own different "personality" when it comes to their eruptions.
Of the three, Crater Lake alone remains unchecked on my bucket trip list. Still, I got my chance to learn more about the lake in the National Parks section of the Pacific Northwest History class I took. My group was assigned to Crater Lake. A quick run back through my notes and a little bit of more extensive digging around, and I can reasonably explain the park. A large caldera is the focal point of the park, the basin that forms when a volcano destroys itself. In this case, the caldera has become the titular Crater Lake, which held various names in its early years of the pioneer west, from Lake Majesty to Deep Blue Lake. The central figure in the trek of the lake from natural wonder to National Park was William Gladstone Steel. From his first trip to the lake, the geologist was fascinated by Crater Lake's wonder and was determined to see the land set aside and preserved for future generations to enjoy. Steel not only helped to record lake depth measurements and take notes of interesting features of the lake (even naming Wizard Island), but he was instrumental in making the final push for making Crater Lake into a National Park, even petitioning President Teddy Roosevelt personally toward this end. In later years, Steel was key to running the park and maintained an influence on naming the geographic features of the park, even helping to provide the eventual name of the volcano from which the Crater had formed.
Mount Mazama, the volcano that stood before the caldera formed that would become Crater Lake, experienced its grand collapse an estimated 7,700 years ago, after humans had come to inhabit the vicinity. In her collection of oral traditions of the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest, Ella Clark presents a tale recounted to a young soldier at a nearby Fort by Chief Lalek of the Klamath. This story is a legend that explains the massive eruption of Mount Mazama that destroyed the mountain, a tradition handed down through the ages. The spirit of the volcano is embodied in the character of the "Chief of the Below World" who wreaks peril upon the nearby tribe after being denied the hand of Loha, a girl from the tribe. This Chief then goes to war with the "Chief of the Above World" and the other spirits around his mountain, which is stopped by the sacrifice of two elderly Medicine Men from the tribe. The story then recounts that after one last earthquake, the tall mountain collapsed on the opening that led to the realm of the Chief from below. Throughout this long-held legend, there are indications that connect the Chief not only to the eruptions themselves, but to the nature of the eruptions that destroy forests and create lakes of fire. The story ends with the recollection that after many long years, the caldera left over from the collapse filled with the rainwater. The lake is considered a place of death and sorrow in this legend, which is the explanation that the Chief provided to the young soldier for why his people never visit Crater Lake at the top of what remains of the mountain.
After a similar--yet mildly less devastating--explosion from Mount St. Helens in 1980, it is easy to see how such a world-changing event could become part of such a long-standing oral tradition. After a few months of rumbling, earthquakes, and steam vents, Mount St. Helens exploded. It's a story we're all well-familiar with. While shorter than her northern neighbor by near 5,000 feet, like Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens had long been a popular site of recreation in the state of Washington. Spirit Lake at the base was a popular fishing and boating site, and like Rainier, St. Helens had been a massive landmark on the horizon of Washington state for a very long time. That day, though, many people have recounted their first-hand experience: from passengers in a plane flying through the area to a photographer who just happened to capture the process of explosion. What had caused the catastrophe that day--which sent ash all the way to Western Montana and around the world within two weeks--was the slow buildup of gases from the series of prequel eruptions over the course of the past two months, which created a massive bulge that uplifted the northern face of the mountain by five feet per day. The last earthquake and expulsion of gases was the final straw and the entire north face of the mountain exploded in a massive landslide that changed the landscape around it for up to fifteen miles away and super-heated the plain in front of the remaining caldera so that all the way up to 1985, steam vents could be seen there. An impressive area of scientific study, Mount St. Helens has provided insights into ecological recolonization (regrowth of plants and reintroduction of animals to a devastated landscape) and has helped with the study of geological impact and processes related to volcanoes and eruptions. This volcano has already become a standard story for geology and science students the country (and world) over. It's a legend in the making, and it will be interesting in coming centuries to see how the story shifts from its scientific importance to its cultural and historical impact in a way more akin to the legends of the American Indians near the former Mount Mazama.
Coming back around, we return to Mount Rainier, still standing, rather quiet since its last eruption, a peaceful and remarkable landmark on the landscape of the Pacific Northwest--yet, many geologists consider this volcano the more deadly of the Washingtonian duo. Standing high over the Puget Sound landscape, Mount Rainier is an astonishing 14,410 feet high, visible up and down the Sound corridor. Outside its height, Rainier's true danger--according to scientists--lies in the most unlikely of places. The volcano is home to the most single-peak glaciers in the entire lower 48 states. The park is home to an extensive glacial cave system, and even at the low heights my roommate and I reached in July, I can say that I believe this, as we passed a glacier below the point where we stopped and returned to the base. Surprisingly, it's not the fire of the molten rock an eruption would bring that would be the most dangerous, but the ice that makes its home on the peak. Should the mountain erupt, the heat of an eruption--very great, as indicated by the persistence of vents at the site of Mount St. Helens--would almost instantly turn the ice to steam and extremely hot water, mixing with the soil and rock on the mountain's surface and turning into a very dangerous, very hot mudslide. At almost 5,000 feet higher than the former height of Mount St. Helens, even with a different eruption style than the other volcano, Rainier would most surely have more force behind its eruption, increasing its range of effect. With the entirety of the Puget Sound range within its shadow and the threat of its glacial ice pack, Rainier stands out as a center of beauty and danger that has awed European explorers from the late 1700s all the way to modern recreation enthusiasts--much as have its sisters in the Cascade Range.
Volcanoes (and mountains in general if the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition and countless other pioneers to the region are any basis to refer to) have had a marked cultural impact on how all people who have lived in the Pacific Northwest have perceived their surroundings. Not only are they the focal points of the horizon from most any major city along the coast or tourist traps for hikers and explorers, but they hold stories beyond the geological tale they tell. Before its explosion, Mount St. Helens, like its sister to the north, was a camping destination of many and a sight to behold. Now, its story has changed. With the violence and suddenness of its destruction, it has held fast in the mind of the American culture and history. Much as the massive explosion of Mount Mazama did for the American Indians who have lived here far longer than those from Europe. Yet we share a same story on this front: our dramatic and beautiful world has held our attention both before and after catastrophe, and the latter can affix an event and place in our cultural consciousness long after. As we enjoy the beauty of Mount Rainier, we find ourselves connected to a continuing story of people in the region for millennia: an awe of these massive landmarks. In remembering Mount St. Helens, we are in the first steps of forming a history that will be handed down through the ages as the tales of Mount Mazama were thousands of years past, and perhaps, one day, our descendants will tell a similar tale of the next eruption of another mountain in the Pacific Northwest: a recurring tale that binds us to humanity throughout the ages.
Bibliography (aka, Further Reading):
Anderson, David A. Images of America: Mount St. Helens. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2013.
Clark, Ella E. Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1953.
Johnstone, Donald M. Mount Rainier National Park. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2013.
LaPlante, Margaret. Images of America: Crater Lake National Park. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2013.
Watt, Jim and Kelly Watt, dir. Discoveries America National Parks: Mount Rainier & Mount St. Helens. 2014; Eugene, Oregon: Bennett-Watt Entertainment, Inc., 2014. DVD.
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