Tag Archives: Cascade Range

local news

Never thought I’d see this

Even when you grow up in the shadow of a string of volcanic peaks, you hardly ever expect to see one of them explode … at least I never expected it!

But it did. In a big way 43 years ago to this very day.

Mount St. Helens, one of those peaks about 50 or so miles northeast of my hometown of Portland, Ore., blew apart on May 18, 1980. The U.S. Geological Survey expected it, as the peak had begun what I like to call a “pre-eruption eruption” beginning in March of that year.

Then it happened. It was a Sunday morning. It was overcast that day, so we didn’t get to witness the explosive plume soar 80,000 feet into the sky.

The USGS had been monitoring the quakes that had been rattling the peak. A young geologist was stationed across Spirit Lake, Wash. The Big Quake shook the north face of the mountain loose, prompting David Johnston to radio to his headquarters in Vancouver, Wash.: Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!

The “it” was a pyroclastic cloud of rocks and dirt that roared across the lake at 500 mph. The blast vaporized Johnston.

Allow me this personal privilege. I had taken an up-close look at the summit in March 1980. I asked a young acquaintance to fly me to the mountain when the summit began cratering. Back and forth we flew over Mount St. Helens, allowing me to photograph the very beginning of what would become a seminal event in the region.

A reporter who worked with me at the Oregon City Enterprise-Courier drove to the region to interview David Johnston, the young man who would die when the mountain exploded.

One does not — one cannot — forget what happened that day when a peak sporting a seemingly symmetrical snow-capped cone would by the end of a day would be scarred forever by an unimaginable force of Mother Nature.

To be sure, it was a sight I never imagined seeing. Oh, and Mount St. Helens’s status today? The USGS calls it an “active volcano.” My advice to the locals? Get and stay ready to get the hell out of there!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Home is where I live

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Long ago I adopted the mantra that “home is where I live.”

That always prevented me from saying that I would be “going home” upon returning to Oregon, the state where I was born and came of age.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I feel a strange sense of being “home” while coming back to Oregon.

My wife and I embarked on a remarkable journey through life nearly 50 years ago. It took us eventually to Texas — with excursions along the way to virtually all 50 states and about 20 countries.

Going “home” to Oregon usually fills me with a sense of familiarity. I know Portland. I know the Willamette Valley, the Columbia River Gorge, the Cascade Range, the Pacific Ocean coastline.

I know these places because I frequented them many times before my career led me to Texas, where we reared our sons and brought them into manhood.

Our most recent return to the Pacific Northwest has filled me with an added pleasure. It has enabled me to hook up with young men of my youth. These are fellows who were awkward and gawky once in their lives … in our lives. They have grown up just as I managed to do.

We all have enjoyed success in professional and personal aspects of our lives. It hasn’t been a joy ride devoid of potholes along the way. It’s just life as we all know and expect it to be.

I still believe that “home is where I live.” Coming back to where I used to call “home” has given me a strange sense of belonging. It feels mighty good.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 112: Back to the beginning

Not quite 47 years ago, my wife and I recited our sacred marriage vow — in the quickest 22-minute ceremony of my life — spent a glorious honeymoon in the Cascade Range of Central Oregon and returned to start our life in a two-bedroom apartment in southeast Portland.

Our monthly rent in 1971 was — get a load of this — $135.

Many years later — after owning four homes in Oregon and in Texas — we have returned to our “roots,” more or less.

We have decided to return to apartment living.

I must stipulate the obvious. Our rent today is nowhere close to what we paid when we began our life together. You don’t need to know what we’re paying these days; just know that it is many times more than what we paid back in the day.

We are thrilled with this turn our life has taken.

After we sold our Amarillo house we decided quickly to forgo the search for a new house to buy, to take on another mortgage that we likely wouldn’t be able to outlive, to be saddled with house repairs as they occurred.

We decided to rent. Yes, our intent was to “downsize” significantly from the house we owned in Amarillo. We did unload many of our possessions, but not enough of them. We have managed to stuff our remaining belongings into this apartment in Fairview, although it doesn’t look as though it’s stuffed.

Fairview is a lovely community tucked between Allen and McKinney in Collin County. The sign at the city limit says the population is around 7,200 residents, although I am absolutely certain it’s much larger than that today.

Our grand scheme goes something like this:

We’ll use the apartment as a jumping-off place for the travel we intend to pursue in our retirement years. We own a 28-foot fifth wheel that we hitch to the back of our pickup. It served as our home for several months while we prepared to sell our house and then put our dwelling on the market. Our fifth wheel served us well in that capacity.

Now it’s being returned to its original mission, as a recreational travel vehicle. We will use it frequently, weather permitting, as we hit the road across North America.

We already have returned to the Cascade Range. We’ve taken our RV to all three coasts and to the Great Lakes region. There’s plenty more to see and enjoy.

We will return home to our apartment, just as we did when we began this marvelous journey together. It’s been a great ride so far.

However, we aren’t nearly finished.

environmental news

Kilauea produces thrills and fright

Most of those of us who live in the 48 contiguous United States of America don’t have to worry about the forces of nature that are putting the folks of Hawaii in such peril at the moment.

Kilauea is erupting on the island of Hawaii. It’s showing no sign of letting up. It’s covering streets and highways with lava. I haven’t heard of any loss of life. The volcano has become — for years, apparently — part of people’s daily existence. It is getting worse.

My heart goes out to those in harm’s way.

I have been reading some material in the New York Times and other publications about comparisons between what is happening in Hawaii and what could happen along other volcanic mountain chains in the United States.

I was particularly struck by the speculation surrounding the Cascade Range, which traverses north and south from British Columbia, through Washington, Oregon and into California.

Of all the things one never expects to see in their lifetime, a volcanic eruption was one of them. That all changed for me in the spring of 1980, when Mount St. Helens, a peak that once stood about 9,700 above sea level in southwest Washington, exploded in spectacular fashion. The volcanic explosion occurred on May 18, 1980, killing about 70 individuals. It was the story of the decade for those of us living in the Pacific Northwest.

I was living in the city of my birth, Portland, Ore., about 50 miles south of the peak, which now stands at about 8,400 feet, given that so much of its peak was blown apart by the titanic blast.

Mount St. Helens’s eruption produced a vast crop of armchair vulcanologists who became “experts” based on what they heard, read and possibly felt in their bones about what might happen to any of the other volcanic peaks along the Cascade Range.

Mount Hood stands like a sentinel to the east of Portland. It’s a glorious peak that stands 11,250 feet along the horizon. Will it blow apart? That’s been the subject of some discussion since Mount St. Helens blew apart. If it does, I’ll tell you it will create serious damage along its southern face, which was shaped by its latest eruption, which occurred, oh, a long time ago. The mountain is considered “dormant,” as it seeps gas out of the caldera near its summit.

So, it is with some interest that many of us are watching the drama unfold in Hawaii. We’ve lived through it, too.

local news

Here is God’s gift to the High Plains

You don’t see any mountainous splendor in this picture.

Instead, you see flat land. You also see a very large sky that seems to be on fire. Those of us who live on the High Plains of Texas got to see this sunset on Black Friday, 2017.

Not a bad way to end the day, if you ask me.

I didn’t take this picture. I did snap a picture of the sunset, but this image comes from a social media acquaintance, Bill Bandy, a fellow Amarillo resident.

I want to share a view with you that I’ve had for as long as my wife and I have lived on the High Plains. It is that God Almighty has a way of paying us back for deciding to put those tall mountains and tall timber in other regions of the country.

My wife and I returned recently from a 4,200-plus-mile journey out west, where we got our full measure of nature’s splendor. The Rockies, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevada — along with the endless stands of tall timber we saw in the Pacific Northwest — all provided plenty of stunning landscapes for us to ogle on our journey to Oregon and back.

We don’t have that kind of scenic splendor out here on the Caprock. We do, though, have a sky that won’t quit. I have said before on this blog that whoever hung the “Big Sky” label on Montana never laid eyes on the Texas Panhandle.

The sky is the Almighty’s way of telling us: I get that I didn’t bless you with terrestrial grandeur, but I hope you appreciate the sunsets — and the sunrises — I am able to provide.

Yes, I do. I’m quite sure we all do.

national news

Happy Trails, Part 39

Our retirement trail is going to take us west quite soon. Indeed, we’re going to put ourselves and our RV and pickup to a fairly stern test.

We’ll be parked for a few nights in Durango, Colo.

The test will occur on our way there. We expect to climb significantly in a fairly short period of time.

We’ve been through Durango already — years ago. We haven’t spent any significant amount of time there. This adventure will provide us proof that our truck is, indeed, strong enough for us and our fifth wheel. We already believe it. We just sort of need some affirmation of it.

We are inching our way toward (more or less) full-time RV living. Family obligations likely won’t allow us to be living exclusively in our RV while we hunt for a new home. But we intend to spend significantly more time in our RV exploring this and/or that bucket list destination.

North America, as you know, contains a number of towering mountain ranges. The Rocky Mountains loom huge out there just to our west; farther out west are the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range. We’ve hauled our RV over the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozarks and, yes, we’ll go back … again and again.

But as we prepare for this next big adventure in our lengthy life together, we are looking at this moment for one final road test that will give us complete confidence in our vehicle assembly’s ability to take us to wherever we intend to go.

It’s a big world out there. We intend to see every single bit of it that time will allow.

local news, national news

Happy Trails, Part 35

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Our retirement journey is now getting ready to depart in another direction altogether.

We’re heading west. All the way west — to the Pacific Coast states. I figure we’ll be about 80 or so miles from Pacific Ocean. It’s still pretty close to the Big Blue, right?

This test will give our Dodge Ram pickup its sternest test to date. Big Jake has done well already on our jaunts eastward. Our beastly 3/4-ton truck hauled our fifth wheel with little strain through the Appalachian Mountains, along the Shenandoah Valley, through West Virginia, through the Ozarks.

We have supreme confidence in our truck’s ability to do the job it is about to do.

We’ll be crossing the Rocky Mountains. We’ll travel near the edge of Death Valley. We’ll climb into the Sierra Nevada Range. We’ll trek north and cross the southern edge of the Cascade Range and then drive through the heart of the Cascades on our way back home.

Then we get to do it all over again on our return to the Texas Panhandle. Through Utah and crossing the Rockies yet again.

Our outings are becoming more frequent. Indeed, soon — perhaps even quite soon — we intend to empty our house in Amarillo and then move into our RV full time.

That’s when the fun really begins. We’ll need to maintain our base of operations in Amarillo for a time as we await the sale of our house. We need to keep an eye on an elderly family member as well.

We have a number of “bucket list” destinations in store. We plan to drive the breadth of Canada. We’ll likely go from west to east, starting in Vancouver and ending up in the Maritime Provinces along the Atlantic Ocean. I’ll keep you advised on how those plans come together.

Until then … the next big adventure is on tap.

business news, Sports news

A pub closing early on Super Bowl Sunday? Yep, believe it

American football on field with goal post in background.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The city of my birth is known these days for a lot of things.

Yes, there’s the rain.

It also is known for coffee houses on (seemingly) most street corners, lots of people on bicycles, lush parks, a downtown district that is full of life and vitality . . . and microbreweries, where they serve craft beer that’s brewed in the back room.

I haven’t, until right now, mentioned the volcanic peaks along the Cascade Range that one can see on sunny days.

I’ve laid out the good stuff. Here’s something quite unusual some friends and I discovered this past Sunday.

We found it at one of those breweries — which I was told is a popular pub in northeast Portland. My friends had recommended this place as a pub “where they happen to serve pretty good food.” So we went there expecting to get in ahead of the Super Bowl Sunday crowd that would be piling in to watch The Big Game, swill a few brews and perhaps get a little louder than they otherwise might get.

We arrived at the place at 2:30 p.m., about an hour before kickoff.

Then we saw a sign on the door.

“Closing at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 7.”

Huh? What? Who does that? What kind of business would close on what arguably might be the busiest, most lucrative, most financially advantageous day of the year?

This place would. And did. Apparently.

My friends and I were stunned at this revelation.

So . . . we turned around, walked out, and went looking for another venue for a late lunch and some adult beverages. We found one not terribly far away.

Upon reflection, though, I have determined that the owner of the pub that closed on Super Bowl Sunday must be wealthy enough to be able to afford to shut the doors on a day when he or she could have made a lot of money.

Or perhaps he or she just doesn’t give a flying  rip about a stinkin’ football game.

 

national news

Some things you think you'd never see

helens_page06_15

When I was growing up, if anyone ever thought to ask me if there was something I’d like to witness but would never get the chance, I might have said “a volcanic eruption.”

I grew up in Portland, Ore., about 50 or so miles west of a chain of volcanic peaks along the Cascade Range. Most of the peaks were considered to be in various stages of dormancy. Some of them are extinct. They’ll never erupt again.

One of them, though, just northeast of our city, was considered “most likely” to erupt. Who would have thought we’d actually witness it.

Thirty-five years ago, on May 18, 1980, good ol’ Mount St. Helens blew apart in a cataclysmic blast no one likely ever thought they’d witness.

It was a Sunday. It was overcast in Portland that morning, so we didn’t actually witness the ash cloud blown 50,000 feet into the air over Washington state. Aerial photographers took plenty of pictures, though. It was a huge day in the lives of those of us who grew up looking eastward along the Cascades.

Portland’s signature actually is Mount Hood, the highest peak in Oregon. To the north of Mount Hood is Mount St. Helens.

Prior to the blast, Mount St. Helens cut an impressive and pristine figure against the sky. It looked almost geometrically perfect. Some folks called it the “Mount Fuji of the Americas,” as it bore some vague resemblance to Japan’s famous — and perfectly shaped — peak.

The cataclysm took care of Mount St. Helens’s appearance. It blew about 1,500 feet of dirt and rock off the top of the mountain, scattering it as part of that pyroclastic flow of hot gas and ash that ripped through the Douglas fir forest, filling Spirit Lake with fallen timber.

The mountain had been rumbling for a couple of months prior to the blast. I had the thrill of a lifetime when I flew over the summit in a private aircraft to take pictures of the crater’s early beginning. One of my colleagues at the paper where I worked drove that day in March to interview individuals who were monitoring the mountain’s activity for the U.S. Geological Service.

My colleague, Dave Peters, caught up with a young geologist named David Johnston, visited with him about what he was witnessing as the mountain started rumbling. Dave returned and filed a fascinating feature about Johnston and others he met that day.

Johnston would die in the blast a few weeks later as he was perched on a ridge that would be renamed in his memory. As the once-gorgeous peak blew apart, Johnston yelled into his radio to the USGS headquarters: Vancouver, Vancouver … this is it!

And then, just like that, he was gone.

That amazing day is etched in the memories of those of us who were aware of the volcanoes that dotted our skyline to our east.

I doubt any of us ever thought we’d witness what we saw on that Sunday morning 35 years ago.

Who knew?

Uncategorized

When a pristine peak blew its top

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP2dreOI8gI

Admit it. You’ve thought at least once in your life that there are things in this world you thought you’d never see, certainly not up close.

I’ve had a few of those thoughts in my life. But if you live long enough and are fortunate travel and see a few places around the world, you get to check many of those things off your “bucket list.”

I never thought I’d ever witness a volcano explode, even though I grew up in a part of the country — the Pacific Northwest — that features a range of mountains, the Cascades, that includes a string of dormant and extinct volcanos stretching from British Columbia to northern California.

On May 18, 1980, that all changed.

Mount St. Helens, a once-pristine peak that sits about 60 or so miles northeast of my hometown of Portland, Ore., erupted in a massive cloud of gas, ash, rock and magma. The prevailing wind took the massive cloud northeast over the Yakima Valley, Spokane, the Idaho Panhandle and over much of Montana.

The world had been following this story for months prior to the explosive moment. The U.S. Geological Service had sent a team of scientists to study the earthquakes that had been rumbling under the peak since February 1980. Washington Gov. Dixie Lee Ray had issued warnings to residents around the base of the peak to get out. Most of them did.

One who didn’t leave was a crusty old fellow named Harry Truman. “I ain’t goin’,” he’d say, or words to that effect. He and his cats stayed put and were buried under several hundred feet of volcanic mud.

It was a Sunday morning when the mountain blew. We didn’t see it actually explode from our house in Portland, as it was overcast that day … imagine that, eh? But it erupted and blew roughly 1,500 feet off the summit of what used to be a nearly perfect cone-shaped peak, one of several that dominates the horizon north and east of Portland.

We would see subsequent eruptions later that summer. One, in July, sent an ash cloud actually higher into the air that the May 18, 1980 cataclysmic blast. The mountain has experienced minor eruptive episodes in the years since and I believe the USGS still classifies St. Helens as an active volcano.

Arguably the most memorable quote of that remarkable moment came from a USGS scientist, who, when the mountain blew was perched on a ridge across Spirit Lake. David Johnston had been monitoring the mountain for weeks, reading seismic equipment and feeding data back to his headquarters in nearby Vancouver, Wash., just across the Columbia River from Portland.

Then the blast occurred, prompting Johnston to exclaim: “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!”

Then, in an instant, David Johnston was vaporized.

The rest of us remember the event well.