Northwest Fishing Reports

What were you doing 35 years ago - May 18, 1980 when the Mountain blew its top? My wife and I were fishing at King County's Bass Lake.

sitting in my parent basement recovering from a knee rebuild. I thought one of my buddies had snuck in house and was pushing the couch I was on, it was the tremors from the eruption.

At Marymoore Park, setting up for a dog show.

My 2 dogs kept getting out of their pen and coming to me, I was off across the field a bit, they found me, and were looking to the south, but there were no squirrels for them to see.

Then after a bit they quieted down and all was well. The squirrels and birds came back alive.

Later we heard the mt blew.

I had just finished delivering my paper route and was putting my cart away at the house and was about to walk into the backyard when I heard the loud noise of the mountain erupting. Didn't think much of it and went back to bed. It was only when I woke up and turned on the TV expecting to see some show and it was preempted by the news did I know what had happened.

Just getting up after a long night out. Heard the booms in sedro-woolley and thought somebody was blowing stumps pretty early. That afternoon I got activated with my national guard unit and started for eastern washington for 2 1/2 weeks cleaning up.

Great thread, Bob.

I was on a marching band trip to Spokane. We played the lilac festival.
On the way back we were in the middle of nowhere, Eastern WA. We were traveling on a tour bus. I distinctly remember that in the mid day, the skies turned nearly black, and crazy cloud formations.
Kids were freaking out. Some thought it was the Apocalypse. Somebody had a transistor radio.
Eventually it was an incredible dumping of ash. There was about 6" of ash on roof tops. People used snow shovels. Cars had carborators back in the day, and they just couldn't run with that ash in the air.

Eventualy we were taken to a community center in Moses lake. There we stayed with dozens of wayward travelers.
The Red Cross fed us. I remember a man having a seizure in the soup line.

It was a CRAZY time that I will never forget.

Wondering if my parents and family were OK. I was at Yokota AB, Japan both times the mountain blew and my folks were in Lacey when it happened.

My uncle had leased property south of Morton for cattle, we used to go camping there nearly every weekend. I remember being pissed when starting in April we weren't going camping there anymore. That morning we we're driving through Covington and I remember seeing the ash cloud from the car window and finally understanding why we weren't going camping.
One of the following eruptions later in the summer I was fishing the Yakima River between Yakima and Zillah when the ash started to fall. No action all morning and BOOM 2 minutes into the ash hitting the ground and I caught a 20+ inch rainbow

Fishing at Long lake, looking down river and seeing what I thought was the biggest storm ever coming at me.
I turned the radio on in my car just in time to hear the guy say, we are not sure what it is but it is coming.

Sitting on the..... taking care of the morning constitutional when I heard it on the radio. Really hard to forget!

on the deck of our cabin in cle elum getting ready to repaint it, when I noticed the fine dust on the hood of our truck, than the sky started to darken, we loaded up and headed back over the pass. Just made it before everything went to ......ll.

In my backyard in Kirkland looking at this funny mushroom cloud. I never did hear a boom but then I have hearing aids now.

I was living in Pasco and was fishing a lake north of town that morning. Suddenly there were two loud reports, Boom! Boom!, kinda startled us. Sounded close, a couple of the fisherman suggested rock blasting, that seemed plausible, went back to fishing.

After a half hour the fishing had slowed and I decided to head home, as I walked up the hill to the campground I noticed a dark cloud on the horizon to the west...good time to leave before the rain comes. Walking to my car I hear some campers talking about Mt St Helens and listening to a radio. I walk over and ask if they heard something about the mountain, they just tell me to turn around and look. The "rain cloud" now filling the western horizon was the ash cloud and I could tell it was approaching fast.

I'm 60 miles north of town and as near as I can work out the timing, the ash cloud was at Yakima 90 miles west of town, I jumped in my car and race at 80 back to town. I reach town just as the first of the cloud hits, with the ash falling I get inside my apartment seal the doors with towels, turn on the TV to get the emergency updates...yeah the updates....gotta be here somewhere.....Well there wasn't any.

Luckily the Tri-Cities was at the southern edge of the ash cloud and wasn't impacted like the cities to the north, had some friends get stuck in the Ellensburg area after frying their engines driving through the cloud.

And so it was.....