The world’s youngest glacier

August 25, 2024 9:18 AM

It sits in one of the planet’s newest landscapes, the Gen X-era crater of Mount St. Helens, born out of the mountain’s May 18, 1980, eruption. Although the cataclysm beheaded the summit and wiped out 70% of the volcano’s glaciers, it also created an unexpectedly ideal location (high, steep surrounding walls that reduce sunlight and generate abundant rockfalls and avalanches, and decent annual snow fall) for a new glacier to form.

more at uses.gov

A Dangerous Glacier Grows Inside Mount St. Helens' Crater | OPB SLYT

time lapse

posted by bq (19 comments total)

a clash between lava and snow
hmm...wonder what'll happen
posted by HearHere at 9:38 AM on August 25

Welcome, baby glacier!! (I hope you live long and prosper but I'm a little worried for you...)
posted by supermedusa at 9:43 AM on August 25 [3 favorites]

omg the guy in the Dangerous Glacier video. he is...a very special and unique individual. I think I love him!
posted by supermedusa at 9:47 AM on August 25

So cool!
posted by hydropsyche at 10:22 AM on August 25

the Gen X-era crater of Mount St. Helens

I often complain that nobody ever remembers us, but I’m not sure this is the context I had in mind.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:45 AM on August 25 [20 favorites]

a clash between lava and snow

hmm...wonder what'll happen

My guess is an 80's power ballad.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:24 AM on August 25 [9 favorites]

> we come from the land of the ice and snow ☃️
posted by HearHere at 11:53 AM on August 25 [7 favorites]

I’m not sure this is the context I had in mind.

I'm still delighted to be mentioned at all.
posted by doctornemo at 12:38 PM on August 25 [3 favorites]

I decided to get a Science Degree, IN GEOLOGY!!! well after 1980. Remember the Eruption, but was half of America away. Then did the geo thing, and then moved to the PNW....

Such cool work these people are doing. Scary as foretold, but, if I were a working geologist, I'd think that is a pretty cool assignment to get.

Haven't been there in probably 8 years, maybe 10. But amazing to see back then when the devastation was right there in front of you. Certainly hope Rainier doesn't erupt anytime soon. The lahar would probably make it to Tacoma. Yikes.
posted by Windopaene at 12:38 PM on August 25

There's something bittersweet in seeing a new glacier appear as the climate crisis ratchets up.
posted by doctornemo at 12:40 PM on August 25 [7 favorites]

I went there in 2010 and was amazed to see how much devastation there still was even 30 years after the event. I'm thinking of visiting again next year to see what changes another 15 years has wrought.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:56 PM on August 25 [3 favorites]

I hiked up to the top of St. Helens a few weeks before the 2004 eruptions started (same year as the video that's linked in the post). There were almost constant rockfalls we could hear around the inside of the crater while we were up there, so in retrospect it was clear something was brewing.

At the time, the very tippy top of the glacier was just a few feet below the southern edge of the crater and it clearly stood out as a darker horseshoe-shaped band lining the inside of the rim — dark from the dampened ash that coats the ice. It’s easy to see why it’s the perfect environment for a glacier to form, given the steep, north-facing wall that’s sheltered from the sun most of the time. Here are a few pics I took where the glacier is quite visible (looking west, looking north, looking east).

I highly recommend if you’re in the area to get a climbing permit and make the trip up to the top from the climber’s bivouac on the south side. It’s not really much of a climb — there’s some scrambling over boulders in a lava field and the soft ash is kind of a pain to trudge through in the steeper parts of the slope, but overall it’s not a super-difficult hike.
posted by theory at 1:25 PM on August 25 [9 favorites]

I always assumed the GenX crater fell somewhere between Woodstock 99 and the first dot com crash. I'm sincerely happy to be corrected. I vastly prefer the version with Oregon and volcanoes.
posted by thivaia at 4:47 PM on August 25 [4 favorites]

I'm reminded, once again, that despite spending my entire life within viewing distance of Mt. St. Helens, and my 3yo self having an argument with my parents about it "snowing" that memorable morning... I still have not visited her.

*** Just a few months prior, it'd snowed a ridiculous six feet in a very short amount of time... It absolutely made sense to me to wake my sleeping-in parents up when I discovered it was "snowing" yet again. They were mad and told me to go back to watching my Saturday morning cartoons; it was MAY and couldn't possibly be snowing! (Ha! I was arguably correct, and it got added to my narration of things that happened when I was three... because EVERYTHING, it seemed, happened when I was three.)
posted by stormyteal at 7:13 PM on August 25 [1 favorite]

I remember hearing about the eruption at the time it happened. I was 5 and living in a town called St. Helena, so the name of the mountain was notable to me.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:30 PM on August 25

Gen-X crater would make a great alt name.
posted by pattern juggler at 7:34 PM on August 25 [2 favorites]

. Ever present and fed by a magma conduit, lava has not abandoned the skirmish and continues to influence the glacier primarily by developing almost two miles of ice caves (which have been named and explored) adjacent to the dome

Exploring ice caves actively being carved by lava?

nothanksbye

Great writing and photos in that piece.
posted by Dashy at 5:17 AM on August 26 [2 favorites]

I loved this comment under the YouTube video:
> When it blew, my mom lived to the west of it, in Montana, about 500 miles away.

And the reply:
>The blast/eruption changed the geography in dramatic fashion. Now Montana is EAST of Mt. Saint Helen.
posted by lhauser at 8:42 PM on August 26 [3 favorites]

I was a kid in New England, and we got a dusting of ash on the car parked outside (and everywhere else of course), which really impressed me at the time.
posted by mubba at 7:13 AM on August 28 [1 favorite]