7Wonders of Mount St. Helen’s

5. River system formed in nine hours. The landslide of May 18 buried the river and highway to Spirit Lake to an average depth of 150'. It also buried most other drainages in the 23 square miles of the Upper Toutle Valley and plugged the valley’s mouth. For twenty-two months water had no established path to the lower waterway.

   Then, on March 19, 1982, an all-day eruption melted a large snow pack that had accumulated in the crater over two winters. The waters mixed with an accumulation of volcanic ash creating an enormous mudflow event. In the morning hours the mudflows placed 25' of sediment on the valley floor. As the day progressed it carved an integrated system of drainages over much of the valley and reopened the way to the Pacific Ocean. The drainages include canyons 100’ deep. One was nicknamed “The Little Grand Canyon of the Toutle” because it was a 1/40th scale model of the Grand Canyon. 

   Much water (or mud) accomplishes rapidly what a little water (or mud) takes an eternity to accomplish.

   Evolutionary geologists assigned long periods of time to the formation of the 14,000 square mile Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. In the ‘70’s they finally acknowledged that this vast geologic formation which includes the Grand Coulee was formed mostly in three days as a result of a catastrophic flood. Catastrophic events best explain the great erosionary formations on the earth’s surface.6. Sinking logs look like many aged forests in just ten years. A million trees washed into Spirit Lake the day of the main eruption. As the years go by one by one they become waterlogged and sink to the bottom. Many of the logs that sank in the first years had more dense material at the root end. Those logs sank to the bottom in an upright position and their roots quickly become covered by the continuing sediment washing into the lake. They gave the appearance they grew and died where they were deposited, one forest on top of another over long periods of time.

   Such formations are found in other places, including Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone National Park. There, geologists found forests “rooted” in 27 different layers in the ridge and concluded they were observing 27 successive forests. The interpretive sign at Specimen Ridge expressed their error. It read: “Buried within the volcanic rocks that compose the mountain are twenty-seven distinct layers of fossil forest that flourished 50 million years ago.”

   Today the truth is out and the sign is gone. Scientists realized that the Spirit Lake phenomenon explains Specimen Ridge. In both places the trees were transported from where they grew to where they were deposited, giving the appearance of multiple forests that grew one on top of another. The so-called 50 million year old formation could have formed in just a few years plus the time necessary for petrifying the logs (100 to 1000 years).                      
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