Spirit Lake

 On May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens erupted.  A lateral blast of hot air, travelling more than 300 miles per hour, snapped all the trees off at their bases.

A side of the mountain slid off into Spirit Lake.  The lake sloshed 200 feet up the slopes on the far shore, scoured the dirt away from the bedrock, and floated all the newly snapped trees back into the lake's basin.  The logs formed mats which still crowd against the shoreline thirty-five years later.

It's hard to see the scale in these pictures, but some of these logs are three to four feet in diameter and fifty feet long.  The mat stretches out easily four city blocks.

Before the eruption, there was a lodge.  Its location is under water now.