Volcano draws crowds hoping to see it perform

By David Ammons
The Associated Press

JAMES BRANAMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Visitors are turned away from the Coldwater Ridge visitor center yesterday because crowds already had filled the parking area. The location has a view of the Mount St. Helens crater.

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At every wide spot on the road through the monument, people pulled off and set up to watch. Some were sitting on lawn chairs in pickup beds. Barbecues were fired up, and impromptu entrepreneurs were selling hot dogs and coffee.

At Coldwater Ridge, 8-1/2 miles from the mountain with a straight-on view into the crater, the wraparound verandah was jammed with people in lawn chairs. Almost everybody had a camera, many on tripods.

"I've been a volcano nut since 1980. Seeing the big eruption made me a nut," said Steven Uhl, 31, a cash manager from Everett. He's tried to visit every year since 1982 and noted, "A lot of these people weren't even interested three weeks ago."

"Just to be here is almost a religious experience."

Roberta Miller, 62, Electric City, Grant County, a retired National Park Service employee, said, "You get a sense of kinship, of ownership with that mountain."

"There's such amazing energy here, and a connection among the people here. People are exchanging addresses and e-mails and telling their stories and sharing their binoculars."

Debbi Pflughoeft, 49, of Rogue River, Ore., said she has wanted to study volcanoes since she was a little girl.

"My parents told me girls don't do things like that, but the bug is still there," said Pflughoeft, who drove up with her husband, James, on Wednesday night.

"She's the nut. I'm the driver," he said.

"It is just absolutely amazing that in our lifetimes ... we're getting two different episodes," Debbi Pflughoeft said. "It's too good to waste. We had to be here."
 
Nearby, an artist known as "O" from Santa Monica, Calif., was working on a 4- by-5-foot painting of the mountain, using three dozen cans of bargain house paint in various tones, mostly grays, blues and olives.

O, who declined to give his age but appeared to be in his 40s, had completed much of the painting. The top part was blank, waiting for an eruption.

Officials thought people were "out of harm's way" at Coldwater Ridge, said Peter Frenzen, monument scientist for the U.S. Forest Service, which oversees the mountain and surrounding Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

"We feel more comfortable now that we've pulled back to what we consider a safer distance," Frenzen said. "We understand it's exciting and interesting for folks."