Rising from the ashes: the eruption of Mount St. Helens 25 years ago this month was no surprise. But the speedy return of wildlife to the area is astonishing.

Publication: Smithsonian

Publication Date: 01-MAY-05

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Virginia dale was in the first helicopter load of ecologists to land at Mount St. Helens after it erupted 25 years ago this month. "I just remember how bizarre it was going out into that landscape," she says of the suddenly gray, ash-covered terrain. "It gave the impression of total lifelessness."

Dale, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, studies ecological succession, or how an environment recovers after a major disturbance. She jokingly calls herself a "disturbed ecologist." When it comes to studying devastation, she says, "Mount St. Helens was off the scale."

The eruption on May 18, 1980, blew away the top 1,314 feet of the mountain, reducing the once symmetrical, glacier-covered summit to a horseshoe-shaped crater. An avalanche of rocks plugged the Toutle River Valley at the base of the mountain and created a 23-square-mile zone of barren, hummocky land. A 300-mile-an-hour lateral blast of hot air and debris flattened the surrounding forest. A cloud of ash climbed to 80,000 feet in 15 minutes and circled the globe in...

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