America Has Other Volcanoes: Airliner Chronicles Visits Mt. Hood

The tragic and yet fascinating activity on the Big Island of Hawai'i has focused attention on volcanism in the United States, and has served to remind us that Hawai'i isn't the only place in the country that has to face up to the hazards of living in the shadow of dangerous mountains. I traveled to Washington by plane last week and was lucky enough to capture images of several of the volcanoes of the Cascades. We looked at Mt. Rainier first, and then at California's largest yet little-known volcano, Medicine Lake Highland. I really wanted to show some shots of St. Helens but we flew right over it, so I cheated and used some shots from 2006. But I wasn't disappointed by Oregon. The face of Mt. Hood was still illuminated by the rapidly setting sun.

Mt. Hood is the headache for emergency planners in Portland and the small villages south of the Columbia River. It is the highest mountain in Oregon at 11,249 feet (3,429 meters). The upper slopes are extremely rugged and steep and as such present a serious threat of debris avalanches similar in nature to that which destroyed the summit of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. The scar of the most recent avalanche can be seen on the right side of the summit in the picture below. The slide took place about 1,500 years ago. The prominent spike of rock in the alcove is called Crater Rock, and it is the remains of a lava dome that erupted around 1781. An earlier avalanche around 100,000 years ago removed the north flank of the mountain and flowed down Hood River Valley and across the Columbia River.

The thick mantle of snow presents the other serious hazard, that of lahars, or volcanic mudflows. The fluid masses have reached the outskirts of Portland in the past, and some lahars have occurred in recent years even though no eruption took place.

Living near volcanoes doesn't and shouldn't mean living in constant fear, but it is important to be aware of the potential threats where you live, and an understanding of what you will need to do in the event of an eruption. And because of all the crap roiling around on the internet, get your information from the geologists who work for the U.S. Geological Survey or state surveys in your area. Always be aware of the potential of exaggeration in the media, because even if they present good information, it will be cloaked in clickbait-style headlines that they utilize to get attention these days.

Meanwhile, the plane continued southward, and another volcano or two could still be discerned in the fog and mist. My mention of the Airline Chronicles refers to my first blog series that started way back in 2008. Some more information on Mt. Hood is available at  https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2000/fs060-00/.

Searching for the Lemurians and Atlanteans on Mt. Shasta (and finding a volcano instead)

Did you know that there are like thousands of beings living in Mt. Shasta? Did you know they are the remnants of the Lemurian and Atlantean societies that survived the dunking of their gigantic continent in the Mediterranean, or the Atlantic, or the Pacific, somewhere out there? And that they have ESP and special sense organs, and that they dig tunnels using vibrating bells or gems or something like that?

Well, if you can believe hard enough, you will no doubt sense their presence on an astral plane or some such, and if you imagine hard enough, you'll see the giant pyramid that encloses the mountain and extends into space where you can meet like the Confederation of Planets, and down into the core of the Earth, where you can do something or another. If you believe hard enough.

Science is hard and boring. Why in the world would I want to work so hard to understand subduction zone tectonics, magma formation, and the geological history of a volcanic mountain when it is so hard to keep it straight? How much easier it is to just choose to believe something outlandish and entertaining! Believing makes things real.

Oh, until the volcano erupts. Then science gets real...

It's not surprising that mythology surrounds Mount Shasta. The volcano truly does command attention. At something over 14,000 feet in elevation, mantled in glaciers, and covered by vast amounts of snow in winter, it is a huge mountain that can be seen from points all over Northern California. It's the largest stratovolcano in the Cascades, and maybe even in the world.

It best imagined as a composite cone, being composed of at least four distinct cones that erupted in the last 300,000 years. The older cones have been destroyed by erosion or explosion, but the volcano reawakens after a time and produces new pyroclastic ash layers and lava flows to produce a new cones. The oldest is the Sargents Ridge Cone, followed by the Misery Hill Cone. These were followed by two very recent cones, Shastina and the Hotlum Cone, both of which formed within the last 10,000 years. The volcano is the second most active in the Cascades, behind only Mt. St. Helens. Eruptions occur every 600 years or so, with the most recent in 1786.

Mythology is a very human construct. We seek the comfort that comes from understanding the unknown, and we seek meaning in our existence. Mythology has always provided us a story, a narrative by which we can better understand our lives. Science is in a sense human mythology as well, since it performs many of the same functions as ancient mythology. It provides explanations for the apparently unexplainable, like earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and allows us to understand the relationship of those phenomena with our lives. But there is a huge and important difference: the stories we tell in science  and geology are based on observation and experimentation, and we always understand that our conclusions are subject to change based on the introduction of new evidence.

The value of science and geology as it applies to Mt. Shasta is that it gives us a tool for predicting the future. When we can fully understand how a volcano works and understand how it has worked in the past, we can better prepare for the future. We understand exactly what the volcano is capable of doing, and what the thousands of people who live in its shadow will need to do to survive a future eruption. And we have the monitoring equipment to catch the rise of magma beneath the volcano that would herald a new eruption (unless, of course, the equipment sits abandoned because of a government shutdown caused by politicians who don't think health care should be offered to all Americans).

So, our field studies last week including a drive up to the 8,000 foot level of Mt. Shasta, and a review of the fascinating history of the mountain. I almost forgot to even mention Lemurians and that staggering amount of..."stuff"...attributed to spirits and pixies and fairies on and in the mountain. I simply reviewed the boring science of the incredible mountain, including the story of how a collapse of one of the earliest versions of Shasta formed a debris avalanche that traveled 28 miles before it came to rest. And then we headed down the road to Lava Beds National Monument, where we explored the lava tubes and I came face to face with what can only have been a Lemurian....

St. Helens 30th Anniversary

It's the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the most recent volcanic disaster in the lower 48 states. Aside from the Lassen Peak eruptions of 1914-17, it is only major eruption of the last century, and for us "more mature" folk, the only one in living memory (in Alaska and Hawaii, a way of life...). It was a fascinating event, as most eruptions are, and was a stark reminder that we on the western side of the country are living in a sometimes dangerous place.

Living with volcanoes is like living with earthquakes: we don't know when something will happen, but we should educate ourselves for the eventuality. Volcanic hazards rarely involve Hollywood-style lava: it is the ash that does the damage most of the time, in the form of ash falls, hot ash flows (pyroclastic surges), and lahars (volcanic mudflows of ash and debris).

Don't live around Seattle or Portland? Got no worries? Here in California we have very youthful volcanic features in the eastern Sierra Nevada, in the Imperial Valley near Salton Sea, in the Mojave Desert in several places, in the Basin and Range around Death Valley, in the Coast Ranges, especially north of Napa and Sonoma, and of course around Shasta, Lassen, and Medicine Lake Highland.

Despite the Tommy Lee Jones movie, I don't think Los Angeles really needs to worry about volcanoes though. Stick with earthquakes, floods, landslides and mudflows for the time being!

I'm off today to celebrate St. Helen's 30th by visiting the underside of giant former volcano: Yosemite National Park. Cheers!