Harmony Basin Viewpoint and Trail

The first gap in the ridge to the west provides a view of the north end of Spirit Lake and the Harmony Falls basin. Here, you can see evidence that the avalanche displaced water from the Spirit lake basin: Logs are sparse in a zone extending far above lake level, and the few logs in this zone commonly point downslope, in contrast to those higher up that were felled by the blast and point uniformly away from Mount St. Helens. Many of the logs washed from the slope are now floating in the lake. In 1980, the surface of the lake was almost entirely covered by a matte of floating logs and debris.

-- Excerpts from: Doukas, 1990, Road Guide to Volcanic Deposits of Mount St. Helens and Vicinity, Washington: USGS Bulletin 1859, 53p.

Harmony Trail

This 3-mile round trip descends the wall of a cirque of Evans Creek age (22,000-11,000 years B.P.) and takes you to the east shore of Spirit Lake. Harmony Trail offers view of a wide variety of geologic features that include Tertiary welded tuff and Pleistocene glacial deposits, as well as a good view of the Mount St. Helens crater and the Lava Dome. The trail ends at Spirit Lake. A strandline of logs sits about 20 feet above Spirit Lake, evidence of higher lake levels in 1982, before the lake level was stabilized by an outlet tunnel. The bedded pebbles and cobbles west of the mouth of Harmony Creek were deposited as a delta when the lake was at this higher level.

-- Excerpts from: Pringle, 1993, Roadside Geology of Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and Vicinity: Washington Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Earth Resources Information Circular 88