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Funny, as I was scrolling I saw this picture, kept scrolling and see the version that you posted next, same picture but darker

Wow, he survived❗👏🤩

I remember that day.

I was there in Yakima, WA. I was 10.

IIRC, he did exactly that and survived.

This is one of the few cases when a motorcycle saved a life. Normally motorcycling is bl...y dangerous.

Ha. My Dad actually did start driving into the ash cloud, mistaking it for 'A REALLY WEIRD STORM.' Thankfully a kinder older woman told him to turn his butt around. We've still got some ash he dusted out of his car in a tupperware somewhere.

Some peepul’s chillins gots nuffin to do, but diss those with knowledge. Signed, Fellow geologist.

Lol @ "millions of years"

There you go again bossing me around. I’m off!

not before taking some really cool photos tho

My favorite is because it was his favorite - the Shell gas station but the 'S' fell off.

I still have my tiny vial of ash, gathered off my car, in Denver!!

Noted.

Take the motorcycle, and drive the fsck away. (Which is what he did.)

My parents had that Ford Pinto in 1980. Ash made its way to us, I’ll never forget.

Covered.

must’ve been terrifying for People and the animals the environment how scary to see that pyroclastic cloud 😱😢😱

What a tragic badass

In June 1980, my band was playing a gig in Motherwell, Scotland. It was unseasonably cold and overcast. We were walking through the town when it appeared to start snowing. It wasn't snow, it was ash from the eruption. I've never forgotten that.

I remember driving to watch it from near my families farm. Smoking a joint and watching the mountain smoke. Not much ash fall where I live.

I remember that day.

Such a beautiful photo with a deadly result. My sister was in Tacoma and left just a few days before this happened!

My friend Jack had a lime green one at Providence College. That thing went through the wringer and kept running. lol

That’s an amazing photo!

Incredible photo 🤩

40 years to the day prior to that Brawley, CA suffered a 6.9 magnitude earthquake.

Terrifying and amazing shot

The old Ford Pinto! My grandma got one when they first came out. Years later I had one (not by choice). The start of smaller more compact cars! Fun times!

I was there 2 weeks before the eruption. Watched it from Beaverton OR with high speed cameras documenting the experience.

Amazing capture. Looking at it now, for no reason in those smoke formations, my pareidolia is active.

I was there with my boy scout troop just a few months before it happened in the fall of 79.

Three days later there was a foggy haze of ash hanging all the way to North Carolina

He somehow managed to unhook his motorcycle and high tailed it out of there.

Dude I'm like how fast is that pyroclastic flow going cuz you know it'll be there like ASAP that's horrifying also amazing.

46 years ago. Your "fuck...I'm old" reminder for today.

I was in Vancouver? WA, mid summer, and there were still piles of ash on the sides of the roads. The summer before, we had a sailboat on a lake in the mountains close to Mt. St. Helen's. Seeing this brings back eery memories.

St. Helens erupted just after I graduated from high school in Idaho. North Idaho received a lot of ash drift!

He's lucky that Pinto didn't get all explody in the excitement.

Saw the video, the power was amazing

Yep. Fifty seven fatalities were confirmed, and *probably* all of the direct deaths are known. (It's not impossible that someone not known to authorities to be in the region was killed.) *Indirect* deaths are much harder to quantity. It's true that 57 is the generally accepted number.

In Lewiston,Idaho!We thought the world was over! Shalom

You wouldn't even see me! Boom gone!

Stunning photo and really puts us in perspective

Smart move bringing the motorcycle to haul ass out of there.

This was a DAY! #PNW

Follow back

I was in Spokane when this happened and I HEARD IT BLOW! I asked my fiancé if there was well blasting going on where we lived he said no. 5 hours later we were on lock down and covered in a blanket of ash.

Oh my gosh, what an amazing photo

Always loved this photo. They understood the photographer assignment. No matter what, get that damn shot.

The most dangerous thing in the picture is the FORD Pinto!

That red Pinto is a pretty good indication of how long ago that was ; )

I know he rode the bike out, my point was if he’d been driving anything else he’d have been caught in the blast.

The car in front was another Pinto!

Here's a good story about him. The Wild Story Of The Man In The Little Red Pinto Who Somehow Survived Mount St. Helens

When I was a kid we would stop by the road with our mason jars and scoop up the ash.

That's terrifying and beautiful

Vivid memory of running finger through the layer of ash over our brown Buick Regal in the driveway in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Such a dreadful and horrible scene

Here’s to hoping the Yellowstone caldera goes off in the near future. The Earth needs some relief

I was living in Yakima then. It was surreal, and at the time, I didn’t realize the “magnitude” of the situation. It took months/years to overcome the ash. Unburying the city was a monumental process. Every May 18th ever since, I remember.

Barely escaping the active erupting volcano was far safer than continuing to drive the pinto.

Was is really so long ago? I remember it on the news. The the BBC's Horizon did a documentary on it and it chilled the blood.

The ad copy writes itself: "Ford Pinto. Feel the VOLCANO."

Amazing photograph - the experience must have been terrifying!

I was on a bus going over the floating bridge across Lake Washington out of Seattle and could see the plume from there. There was volcanic ash in the air for days.

Stunning photo! And a Gremlin too!

Dear god.

I was in Portland that day. my partner and I had been hiking in the area the week before. still have a mason jar of the ash that fell. it took up the entire sky for hours.

Same here, it was just after I read about Pompeii and Vesuvius in a science magazine. Horrendous.

WOW. That's a brilliant, terrifying image.

3 weeks before I left secondary school 😱

My brother was born the last of April. As kids, we teased him that the volcano was so mad about his birth, she exploded. Yeah, we were sometimes cruel.

Amazing 😍

All Sports Live Watch now

Much riskier

Somehow I survived my father buying 3 of those death traps. Cheap bastard.

Nature’s power is incredibly powerful 🖤

Don't see a bike get towed that way anymore. 🙄 Spectacular picture though. Glad he made it out.

Interesting

My favorite picture from that day..

I call where I grew up and where I now live The Sierra but in polite society I do try to be a proper mountain gal so when in flatlander company I spit in a can instead of the floor.

I saw the Mount Saint Helens Eruption as a 17 year old high school senior from Silverdale, Washington. We knew it was imminent. There was advance warning. 57 people did not have to die. Human stupidity & ignorance. The Cascadia Mega Quake will kill thousands in Oregon, Washington, & B.C. Canada.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=eliz...

Absofuckinlutely apocalyptic. I wonder how hard it was to turn that Pinto around with that bike on the back...

I was a sophomore in high school! I remember it too.

I was living in Edmonton, Alberta at the time, over 1,000 miles away. We found volcanic ash on our car some time later, and it seems ash managed to circumnavigate the globe.

He survived even driving a Pinto

I’m in Portland. On that Sunday morning I was sitting on my porch and noticed a “thunderstorm” was brewing to the north. Which was odd because the sky around it was clear as a bell. Later in the week it rained mud (ash). I still have a jar of ash.

A motorcycle enthusiast who took pictures of the Mount St Helens eruption and then escaped in a freakin’ FORD PINTO?

Wow!

that picture has a fuck ton of aura

Love the Pinto towing the bike!

Can't say that about the cybertruck.