3 First Light on Mt. St. Helens from this Morning

AlanL · Oct 31, 2023

Got some really nice morning color early today and with the fall sun angle got some good rays on the upper slopes of Mt. St. Helens.

Comments and critiques always welcome.

3rdof5 · Oct 31, 2023

Beautiful shot!

AlanL · Oct 31, 2023

3rdof5 said:
Beautiful shot!

Thanks - hard to go wrong when Mother Nature provides a show like this

SWTSU · Oct 31, 2023

fantastic, on my to do list

rawman001 · Oct 31, 2023

Beautiful! I remember calling my grandmother who lived in Port Angeles when Mt St Helens erupted. She said they could feel the blast through the open windows of the house

AlanL · Nov 1, 2023

SWTSU said:
fantastic, on my to do list

Thanks - you are going to hate this but all I have to do is fly straight up from my driveway for the shot.

rawman001 said:
Beautiful! I remember calling my grandmother who lived in Port Angeles when Mt St Helens erupted. She said they could feel the blast through the open windows of the house

Thanks - I wasn't living in the NW when St. Helens erupted. It has grown a bit inside of the crater and blew off some steam once but nothing serious. I'd love to get a shot like this with steam clouds curling up out of the crater like we could see back in 2005.

dan.utinske · Nov 1, 2023

AlanL said:
Got some really nice morning color early today and with the fall sun angle got some good rays on the upper slopes of Mt. St. Helens.

View attachment 169761
Comments and critiques always welcome.

Appears to be the S.E. face, Cougar side. Beautiful

dan.utinske · Nov 1, 2023

rawman001 said:
Beautiful! I remember calling my grandmother who lived in Port Angeles when Mt St Helens erupted. She said they could feel the blast through the open windows of the house

It was odd, since we were only 17 miles from Helens when she went and heard nothing but it looked like the end of the world from the Morton area.. we heard that people on the WA coast heard it but we only saw the blast clouds. A moment to remember, I would returned to Fort Lewis and departed immediately for search and rescue operations around the mountain for a week.

AlanL · Nov 1, 2023

dan.utinske said:
Appears to be the S.E. face, Cougar side. Beautiful

Thanks - correct identification of the orientation. This was shot using the 166mm lens on my Mavic 3 Pro from directly over my driveway in the Felida area of Vancouver.

steveturner64 · Nov 1, 2023

AlanL said:
Got some really nice morning color early today and with the fall sun angle got some good rays on the upper slopes of Mt. St. Helens.

View attachment 169761
Comments and critiques always welcome.

A Martian sky

MA2 317 · Nov 1, 2023

AlanL said:
got some good rays on the upper slopes of Mt. St. Helens.

Nice photo.

I live in Indiana over 2000 miles (3200 k) away from Mt. St. Helens and a couple of days after it went off, there was a haze in the upper atmosphere from the ash.

Thanks for sharing.

.

RangerEd · Nov 1, 2023

dan.utinske said:
It was odd, since we were only 17 miles from Helens when she went and heard nothing but it looked like the end of the world from the Morton area.. we heard that people on the WA coast heard it but we only saw the blast clouds. A moment to remember, I would returned to Fort Lewis and departed immediately for search and rescue operations around the mountain for a week.

We lived in a small town just west of Portland; I think we were about 40-50 miles away. We never heard it either; probably too far away. We used to be able to see the tip of the mountain from our house. That day as we were getting ready to go to the coast we saw the plume like an atomic bomb had exploded. Since the wind was from the west most of the ash from the initial blast went to Yakima. The next several days it went to Yakima. I remember a reporter on live TV in Yakima where it was dark like it was night with the ash falling like snow. And then the wind shifted south and for the first time came towards Portland; we got about 2-3 inches of ash.

RangerEd · Nov 1, 2023

Nice shot! It's all about timing isn't it?
Was this taken from the west side?

AlanL · Nov 1, 2023

RangerEd said:
Nice shot! It's all about timing isn't it?
Was this taken from the west side?

Thanks - taken from above the Felida area of Vancouver which is just across the Columbia from Scapoose so SSW of the mountain.

waltermitty · Nov 1, 2023

Those of you who still have limbs articulating, you have GOT to hike up that slope and sit on the crater edge (not too close now) and have lunch. It is one breathtaking view... of the surrounding area as well as several peaks, on a clear day. Great photo, OP!

AlanL · Nov 1, 2023

waltermitty said:
Those of you who still have limbs articulating, you have GOT to hike up that slope and sit on the crater edge (not too close now) and have lunch. It is one breathtaking view... of the surrounding area as well as several peaks, on a clear day. Great photo, OP!

I wish I still had the physical conditioning to be able to do something like that. I will have to be satisfied with seeing the view from 400' AGL after finding the highest place I can legally launch from