Story Photos
 Jack Hash's three- to four-minute exposure of erupting Mount St. Helens captures glowing rockslides off the lava dome in 1984. The scratch-like lines at the top are the trails of stars as they moved across the sky.
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Man behind famous MSH picture dies
Friday, May 9, 2008 11:40 PM PDT
By Andre Stepankowsky
Printable version
E-mail this articleAs an inspector for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jack Hash helped oversee all the major flood control projects the agency undertook after Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980.
But it was a few minutes behind the shutter of his camera that gave him a bit of volcano immortality.
Hash, who died May 1 at age 80, took a 1984 photo of the erupting volcano that has been distributed in magazines and postcards all over the world.
Not bad for an amateur, self-taught photographer.
"He was really proud of that photo," his wife of 58 years, Muriel, said Thursday.
In 1984, Hash was monitoring a Corps contractor who was pumping water out of Spirit Lake. The work kept the lake from rising against an unstable mass of volcanic debris, which could give way and, according to federal scientists, unleash a flood disaster of unprecedented scope.
That year, the volcano began one of its more vigorous dome-building eruptions, in which molten rock boiled to the surface and built the heap of lava in the crater blasted out in the famous eruption of May 18, 1980.
From the work camp at Spirit Lake, Hash had a bird's-eye view of the action and marveled at the avalanches of hot, glowing rock that cascaded down the northwest flank of his dome. He finally decided to capture the action on film, exposing the film three to four minutes to capture multiple rockslides in the same frame.
"Wow!" was his reaction when he first saw the processed image, Muriel said.
At first, he gave copies of the photo to his friends, but then Daily News photographer Roger Werth convinced him to copyright and market the photo.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Muriel said Thursday that she and Jack have sold about 200,000 postcards of the photo, earning 3 cents each. National Geographic has used the picture three times, including in its Japanese edition, she said. Hash got $100 for each of those uses, said Muriel, who is 75 and living in Longview.
The original slide is in a safe deposit box, and although Muriel Hash retains all rights to it, she doubts there will be another printing of the postcard.
After the Corps completed most of its volcano-related flood work in the 1980s, Hash went on to work at other Corps projects at The Dalles and John Day dams on the Columbia River. But the time at Spirit Lake was special -- except for the helicopter rides to get in and out, Muriel said.
"He loved it up there. He was never afraid of anything, except heights."
Good Guy wrote on May 10, 2008 9:17 AM:
Angela Hash wrote on May 10, 2008 10:48 AM:
Fencepost wrote on May 10, 2008 12:53 PM:
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