A sweeping, historical swath of destruction! Even after more than 25 years, the land around the Mount Saint Helens blast is desolate! And, if I was standing at this spot, 5 miles from the mountain, on that day I would be -- gone!

Around the base of the mountain you can see where the Toutle River has carved its way through the volcanic ash in order to reroute itself and flow down to the Columbia River to the west.

Technical note: this is a 3-shot pano that I processed with Photoshop CS3's updated photo-merge features. They work great, both with pano's, HDR images, and composite images, as far as the quality of the work. It chokes up sometimes, though!