Glad you found it Nick! Hope it gives some idea of what it was like just a week before the blast. Dr. Tom Benson (RIP) can be seen picking up samples. Those shots can give you an idea of what the surface was like. A compact mix of ash, snow and ice. I think RUclips changed an algorythm-I've suddenly been getting a ton of views, even though I posted this 9 years ago. Thanks for watching!
In May of 1980 I was a troubled high school junior, depressed, angry and lonely. We watched a lot of TV at home, me, my three brothers and my parents. What's weird is I have NO memory of seeing any coverage of MSH. TV or newspaper. I must have been that caught up in my own personal problems.
Yeah . Same . I was thinking about having a geology minor when I was in college . But I changed my mind . Nevertheless I've always been fascinated with the subject . Thanks for uploading . AWESOME
@@SusanLynn656 I hope you're better now! I remember watching a woman and her daughter being evacuated by helicopter. There were cars stuck in the ash, the man named Harry Truman who would not evacuate because he was very elderly and didn't want to leave. I was in elementary school at the time. God Bless
No kidding, also if the chopper were to suddenly somehow fall into the crater while this was being filmed due to the weak edge of the crater I'd be sledding myself down the mountain probaly peeing myself
@@LighthouseProductions1 I mean geologist Dorthy Stoffel had a plane fly her over and she was over the mountain when it erupted, seeing the landslide from the top. The pilot dove to pick up speed to flee. They made it safely to Portland.
I’d certainly hope so! I mean, that’s one for the scrapbook and story hour: “I stood on the edge of Mount St. Helens’s crater just one week before it erupted and blew the entire top of the mountain off.”
@@harlandeke I don't know for certain but I think we may have been. I am fairly certain no other media went up there. If the USGS had sent anyone up, they would have told the media and done interviews after-which didn't happen. So probably we were-which speaks more about our foolish ignorance than anything else. Thanks for watching!
The geologists really called it when they predicted it would blast straight for Spirit Lake! I wish there was some footage from that perspective. I recently heard that the entire lake was momentarily displaced up into the surrounding hills, until it all ran back into its new bed, and immediately began to boil. I have a hard time beginning to wrap my mind around what that would even begin to look like. A gigantic tidal wave in the middle of a forest, which minutes later, would be completely boiling. The energy it would take to boil that much water is just phenomenal!
Talk about getting blown "sky high"! Much of that material they were standing on ended up in the Stratosphere a week later. This is a piece of true history. So glad I found this! And a huge thank you to you guys for riding up there! Glad you guys are safe!
You walked where no one will again Phil. cool thought. People will walk on Mars and the moon before they walk where you did on St Helens. Stan looks like he's ready to jump.
@@philbtv Some of the ground you were standing on might have ended up getting washed off the windshield of a car in Europe. "Damn. Lotta pollen out here today."
Thanks for the props! I'd like to think we were bad ass but I think we were just ignorant. We thought having an idling helicopter and geologist would give us some security. As we all know now, if she started to go we wouldn't have gotten off the ground. But bad ass does sound better. Remember too this was 1980 when stories on the news ran up to 2:00 long. Those days are as gone as the top of Mt. St. Helens.
@@DJ-769 Glad you enjoyed it and learned a little bit. This was shot on video tape. This is the only remaining from what was shot that day. Remember we had a newsroom full of people doing MSH stories, along with the daily news of our area. Even though we did have a full time librarian, we only saved and catalouged our "on air" stories. I know much of the raw erruption video was saved-as it was such an extraordinary event. But the everyday raw video just got recorded over a week or two after it was shot. Most of the old video tape and film library is in the vault at the Oregon Historical Society. Yes, we were still shooting film in the 1980's. Thanks for watching!
Mr. Beard, thank you so much for this! Wish I could have been there with you guys! So incredible to put such a human backdrop against the devastation that came the next week. It points out so well how small we are, and how beautiful life is! God bless you.
Cue the “60 Minutes” lead in” “Tickticktickticktickticktickticktick....” The “dream of a lifetime,” just one week later, turned into a very real and very short nightmare for USGS geologist David Johnston at Coldwater II. RIP.
Remember, that before May 18, 1980, nobody in the Continental U.S. had had much experience with an active volcano. We judge things now based on the fact that we witnessed an entire mountain blow itself to pieces. Back then, it was just an odd thing going on. I was working at Washington State University, 250 miles away. We had been reading about it in the local newspapers since March, but weren't expecting anything other than occasional steam releases. I was working outdoors on the farm that morning, and didn't have the radio playing. Around 11 a.m., we noticed some REAL black clouds off to the West. Looked like a heck of a thunderstorm. Full darkness happened around 6 p.m. and the ash on our cars looked like light, brown powdery snow. On Monday morning, we had up to ONE FOOT of it everywhere. It could quickly destroy a car engine. I used to get a kick out of people in Seattle and Portland complaining about volcano ash! A month or two after May 18, you could see no signs of ash anywhere in those cities. But out in the central part of the state, around Moses Lake and Ritzville, the ash lingered along Interstate 90 for three or four years! The ash fell strange, because of the upper winds. There was a band south of Spokane and into northern Idaho, that had the deepest ash deposits of all. Closer to the mountain, around Yakima, the ash was not as deep and had a sandy, gritty texture to it. And Seattle and Portland were in the wrong direction for the majority of the blasted material, which went high into the atmosphere and then east. So, not knowing what was to come, I am sure that landing up there in a helicopter didn't seem all that dangerous.
Likely nobody, with the exception of the people from the USGS had no point of reference as to what a VEI 5 eruption could look like. And it's unlikely many of them had actually watched one of that magnitude erupt. Only 2 eruptions in the 20th century occurred that were more powerful, to my knowledge. A very rare sight, indeed. Thanks to the news reporting, and amateur photography around the area, people as a whole will never need to imagine what a major volcanic eruption can do. Those people are a big part of human history now. We cannot thank them enough.
Animal Mother, you know we were so busy covering the story and the aftermath of the erruption that we didn't really have much time to reflect on much other than we were glad we had done that story the week before. Thanks for watching!
@@animalmother9339 there must be two Animal Mothers out there. The other one doesn’t have an @ before the name. If you look at all the comments from a month ago and you’ll see the other AM’s comments. Not a scam.
@@philbtv Reading all of your comments, and having lived once upon a time in Eugene, Rogue River and Grants Pass in the late 70's and early 80's, well, I just like your 'style' and the words you use to converse with. Maine says "Hello" and hopes that you're doing well and good. It'll have a nice day if you promise you will have one also. Just surviving to be our age could be an honest news story.
@@willoughby1888 I like that surviving idea. I too lived and worked in Eugene before moving on to the Portland TV market. Hope you aren't burried in snow after this last storm blew through. My sister lived in South Portland, ME for about 5 years back in the 70's.
@@philbtv Small world, friend. We got 6" here in Portland along the Back Cove where I live, but inland got dumped on better. I worked about 9 months at The Seafood Grotto which changed hands and became The Seafood Chateau. I moved to Galveston Island from Eugene shortly after the mountain decided to laugh so hard she blow her guts outward. I try not to laugh that hard myself... that's an attempt at being 'fun knee', by the way. Rest well.
I would imagine nobody was there who didn't want to be. And I wouldn't have hesitated. That was the birth of modern Volcanology. And this is an incredible shot!!!
I was a 12 year old playing soccer in Winnipeg MB (nearly 2000kms distant) when the MSH dust arrived May19th. We all suddenly realized we could stare at the sun, as it had became an orange disc in a greyish sky. The next morning I collected dust off our dinning room table - still have it. Thanks for posting this Philip. Great piece - lucky timing. Glad your wife reminds you, though you probably don't really need the reminder.
Stan Wilson and his crew should be very proud of this segment. Really concise, informative and level-headed given the risk of going up there. The fact that they paired with an actual geologist and let him talk was great. So this was 43 years ago (I was in grade school!) Hope all is well for these folks.
Motto Panukeiku thanks for watching. Glad you enjoyed the segment. Stan is alive and well along with his wife in the southern California area. I am retired and enjoying sunny eastern Washington. Sadly Tom Benson, the Portland State University geologist passed away in 2018. It was great to see his excitement at the opportunity to be there that day in 1980. Thanks for watching.
@@deew1215 you are most welcome Dee! Interesting side note for you, Stan and I later took a trip to the east coast-Sydney and Melbourne in the mid eighties. We spent two weeks chasing John McEnroe at the Australian Open
@Dee W when the open was still at the old stadium grounds. We did a number of other feature stories and of course several wildlife features. One of the best two weeks I have spent. Sadly we didn’t get out to the Perth side of your beautiful country. Now that I am retired I’ll need to book that visit to include Ayers Rock, Perth and who knows where else! Thanks for watching!
@@philbtv Thanks much for the update! Glad to hear that you are all doing well and having fun in retirement. I am planning to climb Mount Shasta in CA this spring and have a much better perspective on the incredible forces that have shaped the landscape in the Cascades. Looking to visit Mount Saint Helens sometime next year as well. Cheers.
This is some incredible treasure hiding in plain sight? 11 thousand views? It should be much more than that. I hope this gets discovered by a lot more people on the upcoming anniversary a month from now, but that must be the case every year.
Xantec- we were never still enough to feel if there was any trembling. We were moving about getting our shots and getting out of there. So my answer to your question is I don’t know if there were tremors.
@@stevenattias1803 Very thankful. Again, as I have mentioned in other posts, we thought by having a geologist, an idling helicopter and spending as little time as possible there-less than 15 minutes- we would reduce our risk. Foolish humans we were (and probably still are.) My wife hit me with the big you did what at work today?!?! When I got home. We were very lucky. Science has leaned much in the past 41 years but they still can't predict earthquakes or erruptions. Frankly, a week later we were so busy with erruption coverage that we didn't have much of a chance to think about the past.
@@philbtv yeah you could have the best laid plans but nature cam make fools of us. I am sure the eruption coverage was enough to make you forget about the previous week. I was only 6 then but I remember seeing it on the news. I obviously didn't fully grasp the situation until I was older much like when John Lennon was killed months before
Quite literally standing at ground zero atop a nuke. Eerie how most of what this reporter was saying about what could happen was in fact a foretelling to disaster
Mattster- you are absolutely correct. We were foolishly confident that our idling helicopter would be the safety net. We only spent about 10 minutes there but foolish none the less. Phil
@@neeyotube Given that this thing had the total energy equivalent of 24 megatons, rivaling the strongest nuke in the US arsenal (B41 bomb), I would say its pretty accurate. Seriously, no one cares about your grammatical correctness. How about enjoying the video instead of caring so much about what someone says in the comments?
This is incredible! Not only were you the only guys that had the balls to land down on a very active volcano. You’re the only guys to brag about being at the summit a week before she blew up. You definitely earn more views than this!!
Sage-Not really trying to brag here. It was a lot different and free flowing in 1980. I posted this more for the historical significance. We were just a team of knuckleheads, doing a job and getting very lucky. We got away with one and the story happens to give a unique look at a part of local history. Thanks for watching
@@philbtv the history of the eruption is what brought me here, the 80s definitely were a more laid back area compared to today. I was just giving you a laugh and also giving you credit where credit was due! Thank you for taking that risk and doing you’re job. Much respect!
How have i not seen this footage...im so happy.ive been researching this and watching everything i can find.i even drove out to mount st helens last year and stayed in cougar
The mountain was a media spectacle from the moment of the first activity in late March, 52 days prior to the infamous May 18th blast. Media and tourists came from all over the world, crowding the small local roads and towns.
We’ve all heard of the say “standing on a ticking time bomb.” Well, this was probably the biggest ticking time bomb anyone has stood upon in human history and lived to talk about it.
Uh... every human alive stands upon a bigger 'time bomb' than a mere volcanic mountain. Our planet has more explosive bang than skin holding it together, when you honestly think about what's right there underneath all our feet. And, maybe 'missing hikers' actually do drop underneath the ground that appeared solid ground, but easily gave out right from under their feet. Could be a very, very long drop, too. might even land in a hot pool of boiling water, or maybe melting rock.
I remember this. I was 10 years old with my parents on our sailboat on our sailboat in the middle of the Columbia River. So stunning if only we'd thought to take out the camera. I still think of poor Harry Truman sometimes to this day
I hope he was out fishing. What a thing to see at his end. He saw something that most people cannot truly comprehend. I would imagine he wouldn't have traded it for anything. I hope so, anyway. I don't think he would have ever wanted to live to see what Spirit Lake turned into.
They had some idea, that's why this report exists. At that time they already had or were implementing an exclusion zone ( way smaller than needed a week later )
They knew the risk. The damn thing was erupting for at least two months before it finally blew. There were tourists visiting the area to see the volcano, sneaking past roadblocks to get a better view, and vendors were even selling T-shirts BEFORE it blew.
@Mr. Philip Beard...the video was uploaded in 2012, but I see that you are still replying to comments...so I would like to ask you...Apart from your concerns about recording the piece, what was going through your head for those 10-15 minutes you were there??? and what did it felt like when you first heard St. Helen's has gone kaboom just a week later?
Amitabh Paul-honestly, since we had planned on spending as little time as possible I was consumed with getting enough video. Plus we were on a very tight time frame to get back on the air so I was editing in my head. Remember this is before stations had helicopters of their own and almost no live helicopter to ground capability. Still, it was exciting and frightening to be there. When the mountain blew on Sunday morning around 8:35am I was at church. I didn’t hear about it until I happened by the tv station to grab something I had forgotten in my locker. Pre-cell phone days. I couldn’t figure out why so many cars were in the lot. I ended up in another helicopter for the rest of the day and early evening. Again, we were so focused on doing our stories I didn’t think much about the MSH landing story until I got home and my wife reminded me of my questionable judgement. I agree with her-mostly.
Way to go Wolfson !! Setting journalistic precedent while making history . I think you and Paul Benson are the only ones to capture Mount Saint Helens pre-eruption peak and crater on video and lived to tell about it . Bravo
they were expecting it to go, however i dont think they expected to go in the way it did where the entire north face slid down the mountain releasing the pressure which then allowed the magma to flash into ash and tephra, blowing the volcano open like a smashing champagne bottle
They looked through the geological record for the largest lateral-blast eruption known to have ever existed. Based on that data, David Johnston up on his ridge was in the safe zone (for geologists, anyway); that record-holding volcano in Japan would have spared him. When St. Helens blew, it erased Johnston's campsite down to the bedrock, and then proceeded to scour succeeding ridgetops for miles and miles further on. They were pretty sure things were going to "go sideways", but the scale and ferocity were orders of magnitude beyond expectation. It's like if you built a building and took flood data into account, figuring that you might have to deal with up to 2ft of water, and then the building ends up getting washed out to sea and settles next to the wreck of the Titanic.
Reporter is up there on top of the bulging stratovolcano wearing the same clothes that he wore driving to work earlier that day. Same as he wore driving home afterward. "Hi honey, how was your day?" "Not bad. I walked on the edge of the crater on top of St. Helens and saw parts of it nearby crumbling away. How was yours?"
If you read some of my replies you would find that wasn't far off from the conversation my wife and I had after work that evening, followed by WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?? My late wife often reminded me of my questionable judgement that day, and I can't really blame her.
Glad you were able to see Mt Saint Helens one last time before she blew one week later! I've seen the video and photos of the landslide and eruption but even to this day I cannot fathom what that was like for the people who were actually there and lived to tell the tale! Now the one volcano that really has me concerned is Mt Rainier. If it blows the same way St Helens did 41 years ago it's gonna be 10 times worse!
@@philbtv outstanding video..I remember this event well I had just turned 20 and was in college as a geology major..talk about a bucket list item before bucket lists were a thing..you've definitely got this one nobody will get and live..well..there might have been someone back in the day at Pompeii..buuuuttttt..lol 🤪
So many more people would be effected and displaced if Rainier had a major eruption. It was amazing more people weren't lost in the 1980 eruption. If it had went the next day, there would have been a substantial amount of loggers working in what became the actual red zone. I would imagine many of them were angry about the state restrictions. Luckily, most were saved by timing. Plus, the mountain really made their job a lot easier. :D
I have NEVER seen this report until now 2/20/2023. Just a few days later all the Earth they were standing on disappeared and was blown away. Thank you for the report.
The mountain was literally falling apart while they stood on it. The instability of the north slope and the south edge of the crater was scary looking.
Wow! I grew up in Silver Creek, Washington and watched the whole thing go from the back porch. I was four and a half years old and remember everything. This footage is absolutely incredible!
@@philbtv Did you know that Harry Truman graduated from high school in Mossyrock? If you go into the high school cafeteria, and look at the oldest graduating class near the doors and windows, you will see him there.
For the younger folks - Any references here to Harry Truman are not about the US President. He was a stubborn old guy who lived up there and refused to leave. One of the estimated 57 people who died after it blew.
Could you imagine the terror he would have felt watching the eruption unfold on just a mere television set realizing how short a time away he was from that natural bomb going off? I'm getting chills watching this, but so glad he's here to tell the tale!
I helped pour footings for USGS monitoriing equipment on Red Mountain. St. Helens had blown down the forest for miles, a spectacular sight from the Blue Zone.
It was an amazing view, the way all those trees were laid down like toothpicks! It is also amazing to see how area around MSH is rebuilding itself. What a natural lab to observe! Thanks for watching!
Many years after the eruption, me and my father put his Bellanca Citabria on a Knife-edge pass into and out of the crater. There was hikers on the rim edge that day, they were looking down at us as we zoomed in and out. My father had a timber falling crew near the front of the mountain on the eruption day. When the mountain popped, they dropped their still-running chainsaws and ran for the crewbus. They just barely managed to outrun the blast, burning up the engine in the process.
kh40yr I never heard of that crew's escape. I was at KATU for 20 years. Wow, they must have an amazing tale of survival. Thanks for sharing and for watching.
@@philbtv Yes it was. In the turns and twists of the logging road,,the blast wave would creep up and catch them running away in the crewbus, then they would outrun it for a few corners, then it would catch them again. Finally, slowly, they outran it. It was a dozen minutes, but they said it felt like days. The last look at the speedometer on a dirt straight said 82mph, on logging roads, in a worn out International "6 pack" crew bus. 3 timber fallers that worked for my Dad. Hardcore loggers working 10 days straight before a break, which was usual back then. All of them gone now, including Dad. I worked the blowdown timber recovery the summers of 82, 83 and 84, I was in High School the other half of the year. My father and partners had the Mt St Helens Volcano Flights at the Toledo, Wa Airport during the "tourist" years. I remember your broadcast, or seeing it a bit later on, thinking "What the Hell are they doing there??",,,lol. Brave men, one and all, including you, and KATU.
Holy cow what a close call. I did not know how many signs were leading up to the eruption, all the ash layering up and the melt water. Very interesting, thank you for sharing.
This old video is awesome! I hiked up the North Face in 2/2016. It was putting off steam and swarming mild quakes (tremors). If you were up there when it blew, you would be gone in an instant and you don’t need the warning signs telling you that you are in the blast zone to know the danger. Back in 1980 volcanologists knew when it was emanate. I remember only a few aloud up there the week before in order to help gather samples. They were great at predicting the time of the blast and sherifs clearing people away then barricading the roads. The energy released from that blast was jaw dropping. Volcanos remind us that Mother Nature is in control, and though the area has recovered there is still very good evidence of what occurred back on May 18, 1980. Now, a mix of beautiful green pines that were replaced along with flowers, grasses, and mammals are along side dead trees blown down all in the same direction, logs floating in the lake below, a wide ditch carved out of the Toole River bed by the lahar all the way to the sea which is releasing sediment piling up at the bridge which would block any large future flows. It’s amazing to see beautiful life along side remnants of massive destruction. Hiking the empty lava tubes is interesting too. They are enormous going out the NW side of the Volcano. The view there is now a lot different from the view these men had in 1980! The geologist said the mountain was leaning to the north…no surprise that it blew to the north. This documented video is great! Thanks for posting!
The lateral eruption was truly fascinating. The speed the pyroclastic blast moved was incredible. It's really incredible to remember what it looked like in the early 80s after the eruption. And to see how much the lava dome has grown in only 42 years. It's truly watching a mountain rebuild itself. Incredible time to be alive!
I find it so spooky that you specifically uttered the phrase "...if the mountain explodes, ice, snow and rock could break loose in a huge avalanche, destroying everything in its path down to Spirit Lake". Given the famous sequence of photographs taken a week later, I guess you never thought your statement could be THAT accurate. It's the sort of prediction volcanologists have been striving to achieve since the birth of this branch of science. Interestingly, the late volcanologist David Johnston (who as you know was sadly killed in the blast) predicted that the eruption would be lateral. This was based on his research involving a similar style of eruption in 1956 on Mount Bezymianny in Russia. In fact, if you look at many volcanoes around the world, they often bear scars of summit collapses, some of which are far bigger than St Helens.
I was a 10 year old boy in sixth grade when that volcano blew it's top. I remember the event was plastered all over the evening news broadcasts that day. It's hard to believe over 42 years have gone by since that fateful day. It has become a sort of historical marker in the pacific northwest. Everything is classified pre Mt. Saint Helens explosion and post Mt. Saint Helens explosion.
God was merciful to allow it to blow on a Sunday Morning, at 8:34 am. Had it blown an hour later, the death toll would have been higher. Visitors were headed towards the mountain when it blew, and all the families who had gone to check on their property had done so a few days before. Had it blown on the 17th… the death toll would have skyrocketed.
Mr. Beard, sir, I suppose now days you'd never be allowed anywhere near an active volcano. How much clearance did you need to fly up and land on the rim back in 80 with it being so active? Or was it just a "go for it" kind of thing?
CDN-Well here’s what I know, back then there was a pool of helicopter pilots that our station used. It was up to the pilots to get what ever clearance they needed. Frankly, as a cameraman I was just doing my “assignment” and had little to do with the pre-planning. I don’t know if the pilot bent the rules or not. It was the only time I ever flew with this pilot.
@@philbtv Thanks for the reply. The footage on the vid is absolutely historic. And you and that group were likely the very last humans to set foot on that ledge. Amazing...
this has to be one of the scariest foreshadowing reports ever, the accuracy in the words connected to the eruption is just out of this world, i wonder what he felt like the day of the eruption
I remember the plumage rising while trying to look and focus while driving over St. Johns bridge. The people I saw were watching and pointing as I was driving south.
Who could immagine making such a broadcast on the rim of a volcano on the verge of erupting. The total aversion for any risk has made the mankind lose its guts
If you ever look up ‘serious sack’ in the dictionary, there is a picture of these guys on the rim of the crater at MSH a week before it blew. Amazing video! Thanks for the upload brother. 👍👍👍
I was 26 when it happened. Everyone was shocked of the enormous eruption. I remember the news stations talking about the cloud of ash moving east across the country.
If Tom Benson had waited a bit, the volcano would have brought those samples to him! Thanks for sharing this; I can't imagine what it's like to move around with one of those older cameras on your shoulder up in that ash.
It wasn’t loose ash-like what we had fall on us after the eruption. It was a mix of ash, snow and ice. So, it was reasonable footing. It wasn’t dusty or muddy-more firm. Yes the old 3/4” tape deck and HL-79A wasn’t the lightest combo…welcome to 80’s ENG! Thanks for watching
Literally 1 week away from disaster, and yet if you take away the benefit on heinsight you’d have no idea looking from the video alone that where he’s standing will have been absolutely vaporized into dust and ash.
I was fourteen and could not really believe that we had our own volcano. These were things from far away lands. It was the beginning of a great fascination with natural disaster.
Dan, so sorry to hear about Tom. That was the only time I had met/worked with him. He was so excited to be able to help us with the story. Thanks for your note.
The geologist climbed the current Icelandic volcano and got way to close, he needed a change of undies and new shoe's. His only explanation to why he did it was, im a geologist.
@@ajgunter8932 not fast and definitely not immortal. Probably more stupid and lucky or maybe you could say blessed. Blessed to be spared from what did happen 10 days later.
Its been 43 years since the eruption.I will never forget the the power, thrust of that day.The Force of 5 Hiroshima was the blast. I was at the Cle Elm Ranger Station when the word went out to clear the park.You could not see more than 6 feet in front of you.
I think many people don't understand the fascination that goes along with taking a risk like this. It is not a matter of "they don't understand the danger". It's a matter of they DEFINITELY understand the danger! But, it is truly a once in a lifetime chance! I would have been up there without hesitation! Knowing full well what could happen. Must have been an incredible feeling 7 days later! I imagine it felt like a lot of things. But, grateful had to be a big one.
I talked to a guy in the late 80s about MtStHelens when he said he had been living in Boise, Idaho sometimes in the mid 80s. To my surprise he said he never had heard about the volcano and the ashfall eastwards! Did your grandparents live closer to the mountain than Boise? How thick were the layers there, do you have any idea?
@@astrogeo1 all I remember is them sending me and my brothers jars of Ash and that they lived in Boise Idaho... I was only six years old in 1980... I wish I would have asked them more about it though
I was in Butte Montana as a young kid at the time. The big thing I remember was a thin coating of ash everywhere on everything enough to where you couldn't make out the paint colors on parked vehicles. I vaguely remember it in the news too.
I took in hike at Mt St Helens on New Year's Day 1981....I was in Eastern Washington when it erupted sitting around a fire pit at our cabin..I remembered my Dad saying , Wow some one is using a big stick of dynamite to blow out the stump...Dad was right, God Almighty used a big stick...
Interesting that so many Pacific Northwesterners can recall where they were and what they were doing that day. You guys out in Eastern Washington really took the brunt of the initial explosion. Thanks for watching!
Where those people were standing and the earth about 1300 feet below them collapses a week later. What a day ! This is a video they can look back at and treasure for the rest of their lives.
Very brave ..standing on top of mountain st Helens, and steam cracking through the vents n sliding rock fragments crumbling down ithre mountain inside n outside the mouth of one time bomb volcano...geez that is one helluva nervousness seeing all that happening , along with small earthquakes rattling the mountain...n sure for the reporter n geologists to get the hell out of ticking time bomb......great shot n nice video
sad to know that when you watch this amazing video, the people who died 7 days later are still alive and going about their day while this is being filmed..
Amazing. I've been teaching geology for 35 years and have never seen this somehow. Thanks for posting this!
Glad you found it Nick! Hope it gives some idea of what it was like just a week before the blast. Dr. Tom Benson (RIP) can be seen picking up samples. Those shots can give you an idea of what the surface was like. A compact mix of ash, snow and ice. I think RUclips changed an algorythm-I've suddenly been getting a ton of views, even though I posted this 9 years ago. Thanks for watching!
In May of 1980 I was a troubled high school junior, depressed, angry and lonely. We watched a lot of TV at home, me, my three brothers and my parents. What's weird is I have NO memory of seeing any coverage of MSH. TV or newspaper. I must have been that caught up in my own personal problems.
BTW Nick, you are free to use this in your classes if you'd like.
Yeah . Same . I was thinking about having a geology minor when I was in college . But I changed my mind . Nevertheless I've always been fascinated with the subject . Thanks for uploading . AWESOME
@@SusanLynn656
I hope you're better now!
I remember watching a woman and her daughter being evacuated by helicopter. There were cars stuck in the ash, the man named Harry Truman who would not evacuate because he was very elderly and didn't want to leave.
I was in elementary school at the time.
God Bless
Good thing they didnt decide to put this off a week.
Underrated comment .. that area the reporter was standing on, slid down the north side and covered valley and spirit lake. Certain death.
No kidding, also if the chopper were to suddenly somehow fall into the crater while this was being filmed due to the weak edge of the crater I'd be sledding myself down the mountain probaly peeing myself
@@LighthouseProductions1 yeah...usually crashes kill even when not in a crater
@@LighthouseProductions1 I mean geologist Dorthy Stoffel had a plane fly her over and she was over the mountain when it erupted, seeing the landslide from the top. The pilot dove to pick up speed to flee. They made it safely to Portland.
@The_Ender I just watched that documentary on Disney+ last year.
Couldn't believe I'd never heard her story!
I'll bet this reporter had a "gulp" moment one week later.
“Okay! That’s a wrap, now let’s get the f*#% outta here!!”
Yeah, we were thinking about making our time slot-but your thought was also screaming in the background.
I’d certainly hope so! I mean, that’s one for the scrapbook and story hour: “I stood on the edge of Mount St. Helens’s crater just one week before it erupted and blew the entire top of the mountain off.”
Haha
@@philbtv were you guys the last to stand on top before it blew?
@@harlandeke I don't know for certain but I think we may have been. I am fairly certain no other media went up there. If the USGS had sent anyone up, they would have told the media and done interviews after-which didn't happen. So probably we were-which speaks more about our foolish ignorance than anything else. Thanks for watching!
1:29 "The quiet on the mountain top could be the calm before the storm". You got that right Stan Wilson.
The geologists really called it when they predicted it would blast straight for Spirit Lake!
I wish there was some footage from that perspective. I recently heard that the entire lake was momentarily displaced up into the surrounding hills, until it all ran back into its new bed, and immediately began to boil.
I have a hard time beginning to wrap my mind around what that would even begin to look like.
A gigantic tidal wave in the middle of a forest, which minutes later, would be completely boiling.
The energy it would take to boil that much water is just phenomenal!
Understatement of 1980.
This foreshadowing is literally straight out of a movie, I bet the people in the video a week later were absolutely stunned.
The cameraman posted this and there are several replies from him in the comments...
@@jbarnhart2653 holy crap I wasn't even aware...dang I'm behind😆
I'm sure they were
On point. The way things transpired, they did make a couple of movies out of the events that occurred.
*cut to the scientists in their lab* Who the hell allowed those two on top of that volcano? Don't they know it could blow at any second?
Talk about getting blown "sky high"! Much of that material they were standing on ended up in the Stratosphere a week later.
This is a piece of true history. So glad I found this! And a huge thank you to you guys for riding up there!
Glad you guys are safe!
You walked where no one will again Phil. cool thought. People will walk on Mars and the moon before they walk where you did on St Helens.
Stan looks like he's ready to jump.
We were all ready to jump, back into the idling helicopter. We probably spent 10-15 minutes there max!
@@philbtv Some of the ground you were standing on might have ended up getting washed off the windshield of a car in Europe. "Damn. Lotta pollen out here today."
@@philbtv was it trembling at that stage, or relatively still?
hence his truly manly name.. Phil Beard.. now thats a mans name.. wait for the feminists and antifas squeal heheh
A small step for a man...
“…it’s a once-in-a-lifetime view…” Eerily prophetic words.
Just extraordinary to see this.
You said . What a view !
A lot of guts to be up there is right. Great footage. Wish there was more of this. Standing on top of a moving and ready to erupt volcano is bad ass.
Thanks for the props! I'd like to think we were bad ass but I think we were just ignorant. We thought having an idling helicopter and geologist would give us some security. As we all know now, if she started to go we wouldn't have gotten off the ground. But bad ass does sound better. Remember too this was 1980 when stories on the news ran up to 2:00 long. Those days are as gone as the top of Mt. St. Helens.
@@DJ-769 Glad you enjoyed it and learned a little bit. This was shot on video tape. This is the only remaining from what was shot that day. Remember we had a newsroom full of people doing MSH stories, along with the daily news of our area. Even though we did have a full time librarian, we only saved and catalouged our "on air" stories. I know much of the raw erruption video was saved-as it was such an extraordinary event. But the everyday raw video just got recorded over a week or two after it was shot. Most of the old video tape and film library is in the vault at the Oregon Historical Society. Yes, we were still shooting film in the 1980's. Thanks for watching!
Mr. Beard, thank you so much for this! Wish I could have been there with you guys!
So incredible to put such a human backdrop against the devastation that came the next week.
It points out so well how small we are, and how beautiful life is!
God bless you.
Cue the “60 Minutes” lead in” “Tickticktickticktickticktickticktick....” The “dream of a lifetime,” just one week later, turned into a very real and very short nightmare for USGS geologist David Johnston at Coldwater II. RIP.
Remember, that before May 18, 1980, nobody in the Continental U.S. had had much experience with an active volcano. We judge things now based on the fact that we witnessed an entire mountain blow itself to pieces. Back then, it was just an odd thing going on. I was working at Washington State University, 250 miles away. We had been reading about it in the local newspapers since March, but weren't expecting anything other than occasional steam releases.
I was working outdoors on the farm that morning, and didn't have the radio playing. Around 11 a.m., we noticed some REAL black clouds off to the West. Looked like a heck of a thunderstorm. Full darkness happened around 6 p.m. and the ash on our cars looked like light, brown powdery snow. On Monday morning, we had up to ONE FOOT of it everywhere. It could quickly destroy a car engine.
I used to get a kick out of people in Seattle and Portland complaining about volcano ash! A month or two after May 18, you could see no signs of ash anywhere in those cities. But out in the central part of the state, around Moses Lake and Ritzville, the ash lingered along Interstate 90 for three or four years!
The ash fell strange, because of the upper winds. There was a band south of Spokane and into northern Idaho, that had the deepest ash deposits of all. Closer to the mountain, around Yakima, the ash was not as deep and had a sandy, gritty texture to it. And Seattle and Portland were in the wrong direction for the majority of the blasted material, which went high into the atmosphere and then east.
So, not knowing what was to come, I am sure that landing up there in a helicopter didn't seem all that dangerous.
Thanks for your story of that day Jeffrey. I have read hundreds of them through the years and never get tired of them.
Likely nobody, with the exception of the people from the USGS had no point of reference as to what a VEI 5 eruption could look like.
And it's unlikely many of them had actually watched one of that magnitude erupt.
Only 2 eruptions in the 20th century occurred that were more powerful, to my knowledge. A very rare sight, indeed.
Thanks to the news reporting, and amateur photography around the area, people as a whole will never need to imagine what a major volcanic eruption can do.
Those people are a big part of human history now. We cannot thank them enough.
Animal Mother, you know we were so busy covering the story and the aftermath of the erruption that we didn't really have much time to reflect on much other than we were glad we had done that story the week before. Thanks for watching!
@@animalmother9339 there must be two Animal Mothers out there. The other one doesn’t have an @ before the name. If you look at all the comments from a month ago and you’ll see the other AM’s comments. Not a scam.
@@philbtv Reading all of your comments, and having lived once upon a time in Eugene, Rogue River and Grants Pass in the late 70's and early 80's, well, I just like your 'style' and the words you use to converse with. Maine says "Hello" and hopes that you're doing well and good. It'll have a nice day if you promise you will have one also. Just surviving to be our age could be an honest news story.
@@willoughby1888 I like that surviving idea. I too lived and worked in Eugene before moving on to the Portland TV market. Hope you aren't burried in snow after this last storm blew through. My sister lived in South Portland, ME for about 5 years back in the 70's.
@@philbtv Small world, friend. We got 6" here in Portland along the Back Cove where I live, but inland got dumped on better. I worked about 9 months at The Seafood Grotto which changed hands and became The Seafood Chateau. I moved to Galveston Island from Eugene shortly after the mountain decided to laugh so hard she blow her guts outward. I try not to laugh that hard myself... that's an attempt at being 'fun knee', by the way. Rest well.
Man that is some grade A+ reporting right there. Incredible. Wish stuff like this still happened.
This was back when journalism was a real profession and people didn’t report what their feelings were instead of facts. Sadly those days are gone
Nearly got the entire crew killed being well into the marked death zone (which I realize was too small)
I would imagine nobody was there who didn't want to be. And I wouldn't have hesitated.
That was the birth of modern Volcanology. And this is an incredible shot!!!
I was a 12 year old playing soccer in Winnipeg MB (nearly 2000kms distant) when the MSH dust arrived May19th. We all suddenly realized we could stare at the sun, as it had became an orange disc in a greyish sky. The next morning I collected dust off our dinning room table - still have it. Thanks for posting this Philip. Great piece - lucky timing. Glad your wife reminds you, though you probably don't really need the reminder.
Thanks James. I’ve still got a 35mm film canister with ash that covered our yard in Portland a few weeks later. Thanks for watching!
Great addition to RUclips, thanks for digging this from your archive
You are welcome Morgan! Thanks for watching.
Stan Wilson and his crew should be very proud of this segment. Really concise, informative and level-headed given the risk of going up there. The fact that they paired with an actual geologist and let him talk was great. So this was 43 years ago (I was in grade school!) Hope all is well for these folks.
Motto Panukeiku thanks for watching. Glad you enjoyed the segment. Stan is alive and well along with his wife in the southern California area. I am retired and enjoying sunny eastern Washington. Sadly Tom Benson, the Portland State University geologist passed away in 2018. It was great to see his excitement at the opportunity to be there that day in 1980. Thanks for watching.
@@philbtv thanks so much for this little gem. Incredible, knowing what was to follow. Best wishes to you and yours from Western Australia.👍🏻🇦🇺
@@deew1215 you are most welcome Dee! Interesting side note for you, Stan and I later took a trip to the east coast-Sydney and Melbourne in the mid eighties. We spent two weeks chasing John McEnroe at the Australian Open
@Dee W when the open was still at the old stadium grounds. We did a number of other feature stories and of course several wildlife features. One of the best two weeks I have spent. Sadly we didn’t get out to the Perth side of your beautiful country. Now that I am retired I’ll need to book that visit to include Ayers Rock, Perth and who knows where else! Thanks for watching!
@@philbtv Thanks much for the update! Glad to hear that you are all doing well and having fun in retirement. I am planning to climb Mount Shasta in CA this spring and have a much better perspective on the incredible forces that have shaped the landscape in the Cascades. Looking to visit Mount Saint Helens sometime next year as well. Cheers.
So glad you were able to leave safely and you know that the Man upstairs were looking out for you and your crew.Bless You!
Thanks and yes He most certainly was looking out for us!
This is some incredible treasure hiding in plain sight? 11 thousand views? It should be much more than that. I hope this gets discovered by a lot more people on the upcoming anniversary a month from now, but that must be the case every year.
It’s all up to RUclips and their algorithm. Like, comment and share will help it along.
It's scary
Truly
5/11/80: The mountain seems to be quiet now.
One week later: Yeah, about that....
Juan Pedro Mariano Why should that be the case?
Wow, timing is everything.
Xantec- we were never still enough to feel if there was any trembling. We were moving about getting our shots and getting out of there. So my answer to your question is I don’t know if there were tremors.
What was your reaction a week later? You must have been thankful that you weren't in harms way that day.
@@stevenattias1803 Very thankful. Again, as I have mentioned in other posts, we thought by having a geologist, an idling helicopter and spending as little time as possible there-less than 15 minutes- we would reduce our risk. Foolish humans we were (and probably still are.) My wife hit me with the big you did what at work today?!?! When I got home. We were very lucky. Science has leaned much in the past 41 years but they still can't predict earthquakes or erruptions. Frankly, a week later we were so busy with erruption coverage that we didn't have much of a chance to think about the past.
@@philbtv yeah you could have the best laid plans but nature cam make fools of us. I am sure the eruption coverage was enough to make you forget about the previous week. I was only 6 then but I remember seeing it on the news. I obviously didn't fully grasp the situation until I was older much like when John Lennon was killed months before
Nice work Phil and company. Everything was well said and well shot! What a moment!
Appreciate you guys bringing it to us through utube , cause some of us are 🐥🐤🐤🐤😊☕💖🐕
Thanks Karen!
Happy chicken coffee drinking dog lover?
Quite literally standing at ground zero atop a nuke. Eerie how most of what this reporter was saying about what could happen was in fact a foretelling to disaster
Mattster- you are absolutely correct. We were foolishly confident that our idling helicopter would be the safety net. We only spent about 10 minutes there but foolish none the less. Phil
That's.... that's not how "literally" works.
@@neeyotube Given that this thing had the total energy equivalent of 24 megatons, rivaling the strongest nuke in the US arsenal (B41 bomb), I would say its pretty accurate.
Seriously, no one cares about your grammatical correctness. How about enjoying the video instead of caring so much about what someone says in the comments?
This is incredible! Not only were you the only guys that had the balls to land down on a very active volcano. You’re the only guys to brag about being at the summit a week before she blew up. You definitely earn more views than this!!
Sage-Not really trying to brag here. It was a lot different and free flowing in 1980. I posted this more for the historical significance. We were just a team of knuckleheads, doing a job and getting very lucky. We got away with one and the story happens to give a unique look at a part of local history. Thanks for watching
@@philbtv the history of the eruption is what brought me here, the 80s definitely were a more laid back area compared to today. I was just giving you a laugh and also giving you credit where credit was due! Thank you for taking that risk and doing you’re job. Much respect!
Thanks Sage!
How have i not seen this footage...im so happy.ive been researching this and watching everything i can find.i even drove out to mount st helens last year and stayed in cougar
This is insane, I never knew anyone filmed up there during the activity. Must have been an awesome experience. Thanks for sharing this.
The mountain was a media spectacle from the moment of the first activity in late March, 52 days prior to the infamous May 18th blast. Media and tourists came from all over the world, crowding the small local roads and towns.
-I don't think they knew this volcano was ready to blow in less then a hour or so.
In retrospect this was so dangerous - you guys were fortunate - but the footage is incredible!
GreenGretel your comment is truth! We were very fortunate to sneak in and out for a peek. Thanks for watching!
We’ve all heard of the say “standing on a ticking time bomb.” Well, this was probably the biggest ticking time bomb anyone has stood upon in human history and lived to talk about it.
It was filmed one week before it went off. This was filmed May 11th and it went off on May 18th.
Uh... every human alive stands upon a bigger 'time bomb' than a mere volcanic mountain. Our planet has more explosive bang than skin holding it together, when you honestly think about what's right there underneath all our feet. And, maybe 'missing hikers' actually do drop underneath the ground that appeared solid ground, but easily gave out right from under their feet. Could be a very, very long drop, too.
might even land in a hot pool of boiling water, or maybe melting rock.
I remember this. I was 10 years old with my parents on our sailboat on our sailboat in the middle of the Columbia River. So stunning if only we'd thought to take out the camera. I still think of poor Harry Truman sometimes to this day
You were on a sailboat that was on another sailboat?
I hope he was out fishing. What a thing to see at his end. He saw something that most people cannot truly comprehend.
I would imagine he wouldn't have traded it for anything. I hope so, anyway.
I don't think he would have ever wanted to live to see what Spirit Lake turned into.
@@robspecht9550 freaking rich lol
1:26 "Is this eventually going to fall into the pit?"
Spoilers: Yes it did. Very much so.
“Seven days...”
I think technically it flew in the complete opposite direction
I think in many ways, the pit flew into it.
None of these people had any idea the risk they took until 7 days later.
They had some idea, that's why this report exists. At that time they already had or were implementing an exclusion zone ( way smaller than needed a week later )
They knew the risk. The damn thing was erupting for at least two months before it finally blew. There were tourists visiting the area to see the volcano, sneaking past roadblocks to get a better view, and vendors were even selling T-shirts BEFORE it blew.
@Mr. Philip Beard...the video was uploaded in 2012, but I see that you are still replying to comments...so I would like to ask you...Apart from your concerns about recording the piece, what was going through your head for those 10-15 minutes you were there??? and what did it felt like when you first heard St. Helen's has gone kaboom just a week later?
Amitabh Paul-honestly, since we had planned on spending as little time as possible I was consumed with getting enough video. Plus we were on a very tight time frame to get back on the air so I was editing in my head. Remember this is before stations had helicopters of their own and almost no live helicopter to ground capability. Still, it was exciting and frightening to be there. When the mountain blew on Sunday morning around 8:35am I was at church. I didn’t hear about it until I happened by the tv station to grab something I had forgotten in my locker. Pre-cell phone days. I couldn’t figure out why so many cars were in the lot. I ended up in another helicopter for the rest of the day and early evening. Again, we were so focused on doing our stories I didn’t think much about the MSH landing story until I got home and my wife reminded me of my questionable judgement. I agree with her-mostly.
*_I climbed the north face of St Helen's in 1971... that part is now gone._*
Legends. Im always so happy when i see people exploring where no one ever was before. Man i hope one day, i can visit such amazing places..
Epic report . Same .
… and survive!
That mountain is literally my entire bucket list. I was born in 1979, and I've been fascinated with this eruption since I was old enough to watch tv.
Way to go Wolfson !! Setting journalistic precedent while making history .
I think you and Paul Benson are the only ones to capture Mount Saint Helens pre-eruption peak and crater on video and lived to tell about it . Bravo
they were expecting it to go, however i dont think they expected to go in the way it did where the entire north face slid down the mountain releasing the pressure which then allowed the magma to flash into ash and tephra, blowing the volcano open like a smashing champagne bottle
They looked through the geological record for the largest lateral-blast eruption known to have ever existed. Based on that data, David Johnston up on his ridge was in the safe zone (for geologists, anyway); that record-holding volcano in Japan would have spared him. When St. Helens blew, it erased Johnston's campsite down to the bedrock, and then proceeded to scour succeeding ridgetops for miles and miles further on. They were pretty sure things were going to "go sideways", but the scale and ferocity were orders of magnitude beyond expectation. It's like if you built a building and took flood data into account, figuring that you might have to deal with up to 2ft of water, and then the building ends up getting washed out to sea and settles next to the wreck of the Titanic.
This is great. Thanks for posting this video.
Reporter is up there on top of the bulging stratovolcano wearing the same clothes that he wore driving to work earlier that day. Same as he wore driving home afterward.
"Hi honey, how was your day?"
"Not bad. I walked on the edge of the crater on top of St. Helens and saw parts of it nearby crumbling away. How was yours?"
If you read some of my replies you would find that wasn't far off from the conversation my wife and I had after work that evening, followed by WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?? My late wife often reminded me of my questionable judgement that day, and I can't really blame her.
Glad you were able to see Mt Saint Helens one last time before she blew one week later! I've seen the video and photos of the landslide and eruption but even to this day I cannot fathom what that was like for the people who were actually there and lived to tell the tale! Now the one volcano that really has me concerned is Mt Rainier. If it blows the same way St Helens did 41 years ago it's gonna be 10 times worse!
The Cascades are very active. Mt.Hood has vents near the summit that are venting regularly.
@@philbtv outstanding video..I remember this event well I had just turned 20 and was in college as a geology major..talk about a bucket list item before bucket lists were a thing..you've definitely got this one nobody will get and live..well..there might have been someone back in the day at Pompeii..buuuuttttt..lol 🤪
De did Rainier summit last summer. Incredible experience.
So many more people would be effected and displaced if Rainier had a major eruption.
It was amazing more people weren't lost in the 1980 eruption. If it had went the next day, there would have been a substantial amount of loggers working in what became the actual red zone.
I would imagine many of them were angry about the state restrictions. Luckily, most were saved by timing.
Plus, the mountain really made their job a lot easier. :D
I have NEVER seen this report until now 2/20/2023. Just a few days later all the Earth they were standing on disappeared and was blown away. Thank you for the report.
The small rockfalls as they were standing there, as magma continued to push the mountain apart.
Yeah . That mountain was far from being dormant .
The mountain was literally falling apart while they stood on it. The instability of the north slope and the south edge of the crater was scary looking.
The beauty of the 80s...
Wow! I grew up in Silver Creek, Washington and watched the whole thing go from the back porch. I was four and a half years old and remember everything. This footage is absolutely incredible!
Thanks for watching Skittles!
@@philbtv Did you know that Harry Truman graduated from high school in Mossyrock? If you go into the high school cafeteria, and look at the oldest graduating class near the doors and windows, you will see him there.
@@skittles5347 That’s a couple of great tid bits I had never heard about Harry! Thanks for sharing!
For the younger folks -
Any references here to Harry Truman are not about the US President. He was a stubborn old guy who lived up there and refused to leave. One of the estimated 57 people who died after it blew.
"will it fall into the pit soon?" yes THE WHOLE HALF OF THE MOUTAIN DID
A week later, that rim was about 1,500 feet lower. And if anybody had been standing there, they would have been a puddle.
Thanks captain obvious
@ Michael Bosisto, Enter a Major Pain.
Puddle? More like vaporized.
Could you imagine the terror he would have felt watching the eruption unfold on just a mere television set realizing how short a time away he was from that natural bomb going off? I'm getting chills watching this, but so glad he's here to tell the tale!
Elijah Vincent I’m glad we are both around to tell the tale as well! Thanks for watching!
I helped pour footings for USGS monitoriing equipment on Red Mountain. St. Helens had blown down the forest for miles, a spectacular sight from the Blue Zone.
It was an amazing view, the way all those trees were laid down like toothpicks! It is also amazing to see how area around MSH is rebuilding itself. What a natural lab to observe! Thanks for watching!
Many years after the eruption, me and my father put his Bellanca Citabria on a Knife-edge pass into and out of the crater. There was hikers on the rim edge that day, they were looking down at us as we zoomed in and out. My father had a timber falling crew near the front of the mountain on the eruption day. When the mountain popped, they dropped their still-running chainsaws and ran for the crewbus. They just barely managed to outrun the blast, burning up the engine in the process.
kh40yr I never heard of that crew's escape. I was at KATU for 20 years. Wow, they must have an amazing tale of survival. Thanks for sharing and for watching.
@@philbtv Yes it was. In the turns and twists of the logging road,,the blast wave would creep up and catch them running away in the crewbus, then they would outrun it for a few corners, then it would catch them again. Finally, slowly, they outran it. It was a dozen minutes, but they said it felt like days. The last look at the speedometer on a dirt straight said 82mph, on logging roads, in a worn out International "6 pack" crew bus. 3 timber fallers that worked for my Dad. Hardcore loggers working 10 days straight before a break, which was usual back then. All of them gone now, including Dad. I worked the blowdown timber recovery the summers of 82, 83 and 84, I was in High School the other half of the year. My father and partners had the Mt St Helens Volcano Flights at the Toledo, Wa Airport during the "tourist" years. I remember your broadcast, or seeing it a bit later on, thinking "What the Hell are they doing there??",,,lol. Brave men, one and all, including you, and KATU.
Holy cow what a close call. I did not know how many signs were leading up to the eruption, all the ash layering up and the melt water. Very interesting, thank you for sharing.
This old video is awesome!
I hiked up the North Face in 2/2016. It was putting off steam and swarming mild quakes (tremors). If you were up there when it blew, you would be gone in an instant and you don’t need the warning signs telling you that you are in the blast zone to know the danger. Back in 1980 volcanologists knew when it was emanate. I remember only a few aloud up there the week before in order to help gather samples. They were great at predicting the time of the blast and sherifs clearing people away then barricading the roads.
The energy released from that blast was jaw dropping. Volcanos remind us that Mother Nature is in control, and though the area has recovered there is still very good evidence of what occurred back on May 18, 1980. Now, a mix of beautiful green pines that were replaced along with flowers, grasses, and mammals are along side dead trees blown down all in the same direction, logs floating in the lake below, a wide ditch carved out of the Toole River bed by the lahar all the way to the sea which is releasing sediment piling up at the bridge which would block any large future flows. It’s amazing to see beautiful life along side remnants of massive destruction. Hiking the empty lava tubes is interesting too. They are enormous going out the NW side of the Volcano.
The view there is now a lot different from the view these men had in 1980! The geologist said the mountain was leaning to the north…no surprise that it blew to the north.
This documented video is great! Thanks for posting!
The lateral eruption was truly fascinating. The speed the pyroclastic blast moved was incredible.
It's really incredible to remember what it looked like in the early 80s after the eruption. And to see how much the lava dome has grown in only 42 years.
It's truly watching a mountain rebuild itself. Incredible time to be alive!
I find it so spooky that you specifically uttered the phrase "...if the mountain explodes, ice, snow and rock could break loose in a huge avalanche, destroying everything in its path down to Spirit Lake". Given the famous sequence of photographs taken a week later, I guess you never thought your statement could be THAT accurate. It's the sort of prediction volcanologists have been striving to achieve since the birth of this branch of science.
Interestingly, the late volcanologist David Johnston (who as you know was sadly killed in the blast) predicted that the eruption would be lateral. This was based on his research involving a similar style of eruption in 1956 on Mount Bezymianny in Russia. In fact, if you look at many volcanoes around the world, they often bear scars of summit collapses, some of which are far bigger than St Helens.
I was a 10 year old boy in sixth grade when that volcano blew it's top. I remember the event was plastered all over the evening news broadcasts that day. It's hard to believe over 42 years have gone by since that fateful day. It has become a sort of historical marker in the pacific northwest. Everything is classified pre Mt. Saint Helens explosion and post Mt. Saint Helens explosion.
Wow! That's incredible! There is no place I want to visit more.
God was merciful to allow it to blow on a Sunday Morning, at 8:34 am. Had it blown an hour later, the death toll would have been higher. Visitors were headed towards the mountain when it blew, and all the families who had gone to check on their property had done so a few days before. Had it blown on the 17th… the death toll would have skyrocketed.
Like how he explained that they were standing on ash covered ice on VOLCANO!
Mr. Beard, sir, I suppose now days you'd never be allowed anywhere near an active volcano. How much clearance did you need to fly up and land on the rim back in 80 with it being so active? Or was it just a "go for it" kind of thing?
CDN-Well here’s what I know, back then there was a pool of helicopter pilots that our station used. It was up to the pilots to get what ever clearance they needed. Frankly, as a cameraman I was just doing my “assignment” and had little to do with the pre-planning. I don’t know if the pilot bent the rules or not. It was the only time I ever flew with this pilot.
@@philbtv Thanks for the reply. The footage on the vid is absolutely historic. And you and that group were likely the very last humans to set foot on that ledge. Amazing...
I watched some documentaries this week. But with you, guys, my eyes wanted to pop.
Gracias YT por recomendarme esto luego de tantos años!! Great footage Phil
Muchas gracias Pablo!
never put off something until next week that can be done today.....words to live by
this has to be one of the scariest foreshadowing reports ever, the accuracy in the words connected to the eruption is just out of this world, i wonder what he felt like the day of the eruption
I am stunned that this video has only been seen 53K+ times. Watching this is utterly chilling
I remember the plumage rising while trying to look and focus while driving over St. Johns bridge. The people I saw were watching and pointing as I was driving south.
the amount of energy below their feet is unfathomable
Talk about a suicide mission. This could have easily ended badly.
We went to one of the park lookouts in the blast zone in 1984. Looked like the blast had just happened.
Who could immagine making such a broadcast on the rim of a volcano on the verge of erupting. The total aversion for any risk has made the mankind lose its guts
Great video, very insightful. 🗻
Great journalism. What a sight to behold.
I'm not one of those people that dream about being on a ticking bomb volcano. I'm chicken, but still around.
Yeah
You were so lucky to be at the summit before the mtn was ripped apart.
If you ever look up ‘serious sack’ in the dictionary, there is a picture of these guys on the rim of the crater at MSH a week before it blew.
Amazing video! Thanks for the upload brother. 👍👍👍
Thanks Ryan, but sadly I think it was more luck than stones. Still an amazing experience and glad to share!
@@philbtv , Once in a lifetime experience for sure. Thanks for the reply brother. 👍👍👍
I was 26 when it happened. Everyone was shocked of the enormous eruption. I remember the news stations talking about the cloud of ash moving east across the country.
Thanks for watching Mike! You and I are the same age. It was amazing how everyone was surpised by the size and volume of the ash cloud.
If Tom Benson had waited a bit, the volcano would have brought those samples to him!
Thanks for sharing this; I can't imagine what it's like to move around with one of those older cameras on your shoulder up in that ash.
It wasn’t loose ash-like what we had fall on us after the eruption. It was a mix of ash, snow and ice. So, it was reasonable footing. It wasn’t dusty or muddy-more firm. Yes the old 3/4” tape deck and HL-79A wasn’t the lightest combo…welcome to 80’s ENG! Thanks for watching
Literally 1 week away from disaster, and yet if you take away the benefit on heinsight you’d have no idea looking from the video alone that where he’s standing will have been absolutely vaporized into dust and ash.
it explodes on May 18, 1980, what an amazing trip!!
I can almost hear Stan's mother saying Ok lets put on your sweater for your big trip to the volcano today.
I was fourteen and could not really believe that we had our own volcano. These were things from far away lands. It was the beginning of a great fascination with natural disaster.
Not likely this would be done today. Geologists and volcanologists are a tad' more careful these days. R.I.P. Tom 10/03/1929 01/24/2011
Dan, so sorry to hear about Tom. That was the only time I had met/worked with him. He was so excited to be able to help us with the story. Thanks for your note.
The geologist climbed the current Icelandic volcano and got way to close, he needed a change of undies and new shoe's. His only explanation to why he did it was, im a geologist.
Stan had balls , I would never have done anything that crazy.
Youre the cameraman here?
Yes AJ & G. With an HL-77 and a BVW-50, manual start/stop on coax. We spent less than 15 minutes up there. Quick in and out.
@@philbtv how does it feel being immortal and faster than anything that moves? 😅
@@ajgunter8932 not fast and definitely not immortal. Probably more stupid and lucky or maybe you could say blessed. Blessed to be spared from what did happen 10 days later.
Its been 43 years since the eruption.I will never forget the the power, thrust of that day.The Force of 5 Hiroshima was the blast. I was at the Cle Elm Ranger Station when the word went out to clear the park.You could not see more than 6 feet in front of you.
A week later this volcano errupted... They are in last moments before this on the volcano. Amazing.
Wow !!
They kind of knew the danger .
But they couldn’t have known just how much danger they were in .
That’s like being up in the world trade center a week before 9/11
JEEEEEEEZE!!!!! Just SEVEN DAYS before it went BOOM???!!!!!!!
I think many people don't understand the fascination that goes along with taking a risk like this.
It is not a matter of "they don't understand the danger".
It's a matter of they DEFINITELY understand the danger! But, it is truly a once in a lifetime chance!
I would have been up there without hesitation! Knowing full well what could happen.
Must have been an incredible feeling 7 days later! I imagine it felt like a lot of things.
But, grateful had to be a big one.
Amazing footage
“Is this spot going to eventually fall into the pit?”
Yes
🤣
Along with half the mountain's side
My grandparents moved to Idaho in early 1980... they sent us jars of ash from Mount Saint Helens...
I talked to a guy in the late 80s about MtStHelens when he said he had been living in Boise, Idaho sometimes in the mid 80s. To my surprise he said he never had heard about the volcano and the ashfall eastwards! Did your grandparents live closer to the mountain than Boise? How thick were the layers there, do you have any idea?
@@astrogeo1 all I remember is them sending me and my brothers jars of Ash and that they lived in Boise Idaho... I was only six years old in 1980... I wish I would have asked them more about it though
I was in Butte Montana as a young kid at the time. The big thing I remember was a thin coating of ash everywhere on everything enough to where you couldn't make out the paint colors on parked vehicles. I vaguely remember it in the news too.
I took in hike at Mt St Helens on New Year's Day 1981....I was in Eastern Washington when it erupted sitting around a fire pit at our cabin..I remembered my Dad saying , Wow some one is using a big stick of dynamite to blow out the stump...Dad was right, God Almighty used a big stick...
Interesting that so many Pacific Northwesterners can recall where they were and what they were doing that day. You guys out in Eastern Washington really took the brunt of the initial explosion. Thanks for watching!
@@philbtv thank you. But like any major events of our lives you remember what and where you were when you heard about it...
Where those people were standing and the earth about 1300 feet below them collapses a week later. What a day ! This is a video they can look back at and treasure for the rest of their lives.
Incredible. I didn’t know this existed.
So now we know. It was Stan Wilson and his helicopter that set the whole thing off!!
Very brave ..standing on top of mountain st Helens, and steam cracking through the vents n sliding rock fragments crumbling down ithre mountain inside n outside the mouth of one time bomb volcano...geez that is one helluva nervousness seeing all that happening , along with small earthquakes rattling the mountain...n sure for the reporter n geologists to get the hell out of ticking time bomb......great shot n nice video
Just one week exactly before she blew. Amazing.
This was literally the calm before the storm.
No way in hell would I go there 🔥🔥
@2:16 standing atop a volcano that could erupt at any minute, wearing dress slacks, and Gilligans sweater, now THAT is bad ass!
That is one of the best comments I’ve received since I posted this video. Thanks
sad to know that when you watch this amazing video, the people who died 7 days later are still alive and going about their day while this is being filmed..
Hopefully there were mandatory evacuations by this time.