Antler, I remember we pulled into an observation area where there was a display with a series of photographs (taken at that place, I thought, but maybe not) that showed the eruption step by step. We had to stand on the stone wall to see the mountain. We got back into the car, pulled back onto the road, went around a bend...
And the trees were all down.
It was incredible how suddenly it went from absolutely no indication whatsoever of anything amiss to complete devastation.
I'm sure our jaws must have been dropped all the way to the end of the road, which, as Michael has reminded me, was the Johnston Observatory.
I didn't realize until we began our hike how much I missed the shade trees provide. It was a relief to get in the lee of a hillock where some were still standing.
My son was five years old at the time, so we just hiked as far as Norway Pass. I'd originally hoped to go to Mount Margaret, but we still got a great view. The next day, we wanted to go to the Ape Cave, but Cam had caught a cold during the flight to Seattle, so we skipped the damp lava tubes.
We did a couple hikes later near Mount Rainier, one to Comet Falls and the other from Sunrise around Burroughs Mountain (or was it Second Burroughs Mountain?). That was memorable, not because Susan and Cam saw a marmot (which I missed, darn it), but because on the way back we encountered a big snowfield that we had to cross and Susan and I were scared half to death that we would slip and slide down, down, down onto some nasty looking rocks at the bottom. I carried Cam in my left arm and kept trying to bash my left foot into the bank on that side, because I thought it would feel more secure than walking only in the narrow path, but the snow was too hard to get my foot into. Talk about walking a knife's edge. If I'd ever lost my balance...
Phew.
Anyway, thanks for the memories.
