Day 4, May 17, 1980

A night on the mountain, or rather, about-to-erupt volcano finally passed. We watched the sunrise on the mountain. The beautiful and awesome sun rising was the same as the days before – there were no signs to show Mount St. Helens was to erupt at all.

The weather was fine - cloudless sunny day. The mountain drowses on. Besides the swelling-five-feet-a-day bulge on the northern face of Mount St Helens, there were no signs at all about any geological activities around the area.

However, right after our lunch, an emergency evacuation warning about active geological activity in the area was sent by the Coldwater Ridge Monitoring Centre. While we were planning to travel some hundred meters higher towards the crater, we were forced to trek back to the visitor centre. We can see that there is a very high chance of volcanic eruption, as by the time we reached there, jeeps had already been standing by at the visit center to evacuate us back to Seattle if an eruption occurs.



monitoring data from Coldwater