05/18/2026
46 years ago today, Mount St. Helens erupted – reshaping the mountain forever. Before May 18, 1980, it rose to 9,677 feet, a near-perfect cone often compared to Mount Fuji. The eruption knocked it down to 8,325 feet, blowing away the entire north face and carving the wide horseshoe crater that defines it today.
Loowit, the Klickitat name for this place meaning “smoking mountain,” was where I began my journey up Washington’s 100 highest peaks. My forthcoming book Cascade High – still available for late pledges on Kickstarter for a short time – recounts that history in its opening chapter, including the climbing history of the peak itself. Two short excerpts:
“The year 1980 was also when Russ Kroeker became the first person to climb all hundred Bulger peaks. In the years immediately after the eruption, Loowit became a strange question for anyone chasing the list. The summit lay inside a newly restricted zone. Rumors circulated of early ascents, climbers quietly making their way up the broken slopes and peering over the crater rim to the steaming dome below. The mountain had changed, but the pull to stand on top of it had not.”
“I reached the top just before 6 a.m., moments before sunrise. Carefully minding the cornice, I looked down into the crater for the first time. I had to remind myself to breathe. The north side of the mountain fell away in a vast arc of broken rock and ice. At the base sat Crater Glacier, one of the youngest glaciers on Earth and a rare advancing glacier, thickening in the cold shadow of the walls that had once collapsed around it. A glacier that exists only because the eruption happened to collapse the north side, shielding the crater from direct sun.”
