A Catastrophic Anniversary: 3 Lessons Mount St. Helens Still Teaches

In a few months, a group of AiG staff and other young-earth-creation experts, along with guests who have registered for this adventure, will be traveling to Mount St. Helens in honor of the 45th anniversary. From August 18–22, 2025, this group will explore the area, discover evidence of catastrophe, and see how this “small” geologic event teaches us lessons about the effects of the global flood. And they’ll also see how quickly earth recovers from devastation. (You can still register here to be part of this exciting excursion.)

As the group explores Mount St. Helens, they’ll see firsthand these three enduring lessons (and many more) from catastrophe:

1. Complex sediment layers can form quickly. Secular scientists assume that sediment layers are deposited very slowly and that complex layers are the result of seasonal changes or annual fluctuations over millions of years. But Mount St. Helens “blew up” those assumptions when 600-foot-thick complex sediment layers were deposited via landslides, fast-moving volcanic slurries, mudflows, waves on nearby Spirit Lake, and falling ash.
2. Canyons can be carved quickly. Again, secular scientists assume that canyons are the result of slow processes, such as river erosion, over many millions of years. And again, Mount St. Helens disputes that assumption. The initial blast created a truly massive landslide that blocked drainage from Spirit Lake into the river. Two years later, Mount St. Helens blasted off again, and this time a mudflow cut through the debris blocking the lake, and canyons 140 feet deep were cut in a single day. The canyon looks shockingly like a “mini Grand Canyon,” with the same type of side canyons, the same meandering path, similar elevated plateaus, and even creeks flowing through the canyon!
3. Creation recovers quickly from a catastrophe. The Bible records a dove bringing Noah an olive leaf, a sign to Noah that it was now safe to exit the ark (Genesis 8:11). But could the land recover quickly enough for such a thing to even happen? Well, the devastation wrought by Mount St. Helens confirms that, yes, it could. Within a year, even the most devastated regions of the mountain showed signs of life as bacteria, plants, and even small animals began to recolonize it. Today, just four and a half decades later, you would never know a massive catastrophe had scoured the landscape clean. Life bounced back, and life would’ve bounced back even quicker after the flood as nutrient-rich soil and massive lakes provided a welcoming home for plants and animals.

There are so many more lessons to learn from Mount St. Helens, but each lesson points us to a much bigger catastrophe: the global flood of Noah’s day.

There are so many more lessons to learn from Mount St. Helens, but each lesson points us to a much bigger catastrophe: the global flood of Noah’s day. In comparison to that, Mount St. Helens was just a small catastrophe. If a “small” event could wreak so much havoc, imagine the processes occurring as the entire globe was deluged with water, mudflows, volcanoes, and more. We truly can’t imagine the devastation, but we see its effects all around us!

Yes, 45 years later, Mount St. Helens still reminds us that the Bible’s history can be trusted.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.