Harmony Falls — Saturday, Sep. 6, 2003

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

After the WTA Dark Divide campout my sons and I went to Mt. St. Helens. We stopped briefly by the Miner's Car, which I found sobering, before hiking the Harmony Trail #224 down to Spirit Lake. Low alder, salmonberry, devils club, mountain ash, and fireweed have grown up around the bleached bones of fallen cedar and hemlock giants. The shrubs were well brushed back from the trail. The mountain ashes were in berry, and the fireweed seed pods were nearly ready to burst open and spread their cottony fluff. Pearly everlasting was everywhere. Blueberries were ripe but small and uninteresting after this dry summer. Closer to the lake, where the brush was much thinner, clumps of lupine and penstemon abounded in the ash. A very few still had blooms. Blueberry leaves had already turned wine-color and were starting to fall. Ground squirrels boldly scampered about with their tails straight up like the masts of sailing ships. A Forest Service interpreter came by as we approached the lake. She was a fountain of knowledge about the eruption, though she must have been a baby when it happened - if she had even been born yet. Logs cover the north end of Spirit Lake by Harmony Creek flows. The creek is clear and pretty, cascading gently over a low rocky drop before feeding the lake beneath a log jam. The boys enjoyed themselves among the logs while I listened to the Interpreter describe the effects of the eruption on Spirit Lake. The hillsides are still pretty barren here where the avalanche pushed the lake hundreds of feet out of its bed and scoured away the topsoil. I contemplated Harmony Falls, Harmony Lodge and Harry Truman's Lodge, now drowned more than 200 feet beneath the surface of the lake, and thought about having camped at Spirit Lake when I was young.