Last Sunday, June 29, after singing at Three Rivers Bible Church in Kelso, we started the tour of the Mt. St. Helens area. We started off with the south side of the mountain which had not seen the devastating effects of the 1980 blast. What it did have though was pretty interesting. First of all we hiked the Ape Caves. The Ape name comes from the name of the first group to explore the caves. These caves were formed by an erruption of Mt. St. Helens over 150 years ago. They were lava flows where the lava on top kept cooling while the lava underneath flowed out and left a long tunnel-like cave. There were two parts to the cave there, Dad and us older guys went in the 2.2 mile upper one while Mom, my aunt and the younger kids went in the lower one.

There were many rock falls to climb over in the upper cave, this one was definitely of volcanic origin.

Most of the areas in the cave were around twenty feet wide and ranging in height from fifteen to thirty feet but a few places it got pretty tight and you had to basically crawl or step sideways through a narrow opening.

The caves were somewhat reflective in places.

Sometimes you would walk over a rock pile and be in a big roomy spot with a nice gravel floor, other times…. well, the floor was like a puddle.

I walked on the bottom although some of my brothers thought the sides would be fun to walk on. Sorry for the dark blurry pictures, the only light in the cave was what you brought in so the camera wouldn’t focus properly.

A window into  the cave from above.

And the exit, it may not look small on this picture but you have to crawl out of there and it gets pretty tight.

After the Ape Caves, we went to the Trail of Two Forests where we saw lava casts of what used to be a forest. These lava casts were caused by lava flowing through a forest in an erruption previous to 1980.  The slightly cooled lava solidified around the trees while incinerating them, which left a bunch of tree-patterned holes in the ground.

One fallen tree was engulfed by the lava. You could crawl through it.

Following that we went to Lava Canyon.

A fun suspension bridge way above the falls.

He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold? He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow.  Psalm 147:17,18.