thing. Not only that you're sort of confined at that point. I had just cleaned my above-ground
swimming pool and opened the pool the day before and so the biggest task that I had
after the whole thing was cleaning the swimming pool. But perhaps the most important task
fell into the hands of the media. The public turned to it for answers. But the media could
only do so much with a situation it knew so little about. You go to extremes in urging
people to do or not to do certain things and I think maybe we might have gotten carried
away somewhat in that respect but overall I think we did an excellent job. Now when
the mountain erupted 15 years ago it sent winds howling in excess of 600 miles an hour
down its slopes. You might be able to see all that dead timber laying there. That timber
has been left there as a national monument and it's kind of a research project now to
see how nature recycles and comes back to life on its own. Now if we keep going down
a little more into the base in there you'll see a lake. That is known as Cold Water Lake
and that was formed by the eruption. It runs three and a half miles long and is 184 feet
deep. Now if you go a little bit up here and make this climb up here you'll see some trees
still standing. Those trees weren't hit by the wind because they were sheltered but what
got them was the heat and they're known as just dead forest. So there's a lot of neat
things out here. A lot of life. You can see life all around coming back to life 15 years
later. It's cold, blustery, down I tell you. It's been one heck of an experience and all
I can say is it's been very breathtaking. So live from Mount St. Helens, Paul Geary,
CAP 35 news. Take care of yourself Paul and nice work. You've done a nice job on this
series. Paul Geary reporting live from Mount St. Helens.