cool story for you climbers

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cool story for you climbers

Postby newcaver315 » May 30, 2018 12:24 pm

now not cave related but my uncle was going in for his interview at mt rainier in washington state, my mom dad brother (too young to remember) decided to venture with my aunt so she wasnt alone and bored while my uncle met with the head climber for mt rainier, wanna say his last name was whiticker or something along those line. just happened to be the day st helens blew its top, everyone stood around in awe watching the landslide happen then the boom. as this happend it was either the climber or his brother came running down from the park ranger office yelling " you people have no idea what is going on you need to leave now" my uncle explained this is so and so hes the expert of this kind of stuff and if he says leave we probably should. then the park ranger came up about fifteen minutes later as everyone was snapping pictures and admiring the show nature presented and told them you have a half hour to leave then the gate gets closed and no one goes up or down untill this is over. naturaully they packed up and left, my uncle knowing the roads better drove the way down as ash made visibilty about 5 feet, it was 80 degrees raining ash like a snow storm. my dad said he remembers asking my uncle how he knew where the road was and he replied im just kind of following the red lights in front of me (10 feet they dissapear) my dad said how do you know he knows the roads and hes turning a corner and not driving off a cliff? my uncle slowed down realising yeah he very well could be the first time hes drivin the road. my mom said it was really hot as it was already 80 and now hot ash rained down windows up no ac as it would have blown ash into the van, when they reached the bottom and stupidly turned on the ac to cool off it blew ash all over them . and had the mountain blown just 15 degrees another direction it would have put them in the same path that the blast was. and probably wouldnt be here to share the story today as many people in the path of the blast didnt survive the intial blast and were buried in ash and plasmatic flow (many bodies still remain buried).. i got the luxury of hearing this story as a kid on a camping trip to the st helens area and to crawl through a few lava tubes that remain. ill have to look around and ask my aunt to copy and send photos i believe i have a couple but not any as good as she does nor do i remember where they got stashed. we also went hunting for bigfoot (one campground was where one of harry and the hendersons drove their station wagon across the bridge just a few minutes before they hit harry the bigfoot) , gold panning searching for coopers treasure as we made a huge loop around the mountians from baker pilchuck to st helens rainier then to the olympic national forest to finish off with a trip to the pacific ocean then back to our old hometown of Arlington. as i said not caving related unless you count the few lava tubes that only went fifteen feet or so or the old iron mine we went about fifty feet into then it looks to be pretty unstable so we turned back (my uncle was great for i got the kids okay guys lets go where mom and dad said dont go lol)
newcaver315
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