{"id":4332,"date":"2013-12-28T01:29:57","date_gmt":"2013-12-28T01:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=4332"},"modified":"2016-12-28T23:52:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T23:52:13","slug":"mount-st-helens-pictures-stirs-scary-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4332","title":{"rendered":"Mount St. Helens pictures stir scary memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

The story attached to this blog has brought back some chilling memories of my own relating to Mount St. Helens.<\/p>\n

I’ll share them here.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/pacific-northwest-news\/index.ssf\/2013\/12\/mount_st_helens_new_photos_eme.html#incart_m-rpt-2<\/a><\/p>\n

The story tells of pictures that the late Reid Blackburn took in April 1980, a month before the mountain blew apart. He was a staff photographer for the Vancouver (Wash.) Columbian. Blackburn died May 18, 1980 when the north side of the volcano exploded.<\/p>\n

I’ve got my own Mount St. Helens story that I don’t tell too often.<\/p>\n

It involves an acquaintance I made when I was working for the now-defunct Oregon City (Ore.) Enterprise-Courier just south of Portland.<\/p>\n

I wrote a feature story about a young man who, along with his father, refurbished old airplanes. He took me on a flight aboard a bi-plane he had fixed up. We were airborne for maybe 30 minutes. We landed and then I asked him for a favor. Media were reporting that Mount St. Helens was about to erupt and would he take to the mountain in the event of an eruption — or some activity that lent itself to pictures?<\/p>\n

He agreed.<\/p>\n

In late March (I think it was the 27th) the wires began reporting that earthquakes had started rumbling through the mountain and that smallish craters were forming around the summit. I called my “new best friend.” He was available. I drove quickly to his place in the country, and climbed aboard a single-engine, two-seat Cessna. We took off and headed straight north.<\/p>\n

The flight lasted about 45 minutes. We got to the summit, I had gotten my camera out and we buzzed the summit repeatedly, watching the craters forming; ice would fall into the newly formed fissures.<\/p>\n

Back and forth we flew. I guess we were in the air over the mountain for maybe 20 minutes. I snapped dozens of pictures.<\/p>\n

We flew back to his landing strip just south of Oregon City.<\/p>\n

A point of information: We had no radio aboard. Thus, we were not advised that the Federal Aviation Administration had declared the airspace several miles around the summit to be off-limits<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The statue of limitations now allows me to confess to breaking federal aviation law that day.<\/p>\n

Happily, no one ratted us out. My pal never got into trouble. I got some memorable pictures, which we published in the next day’s paper. And I will keep those memories with me forever.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

One post script: I told my dad about what we had done and he gave me a royal butt-chewing.<\/p>\n

Then we laughed.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story attached to this blog has brought back some chilling memories of my own relating to Mount St. Helens. I’ll share them here. http:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/pacific-northwest-news\/index.ssf\/2013\/12\/mount_st_helens_new_photos_eme.html#incart_m-rpt-2 The story tells of pictures that the late Reid Blackburn took in April 1980, a month before the mountain blew apart. He was a staff photographer for the Vancouver (Wash.) … Continue reading Mount St. Helens pictures stir scary memory<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3148],"class_list":["post-4332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mount-st-helens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18882,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332\/revisions\/18882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}