Watching Baker Bubble

Northern Washington State's volcanic Mount Baker has not belched fire since the late 1860s. But now the 10,778-ft. peak may be clearing its massive throat for another outburst. Increasing volcanic activity has produced clouds of sulfurous gases and a plume of steam that can be seen in Seattle, some 90 miles away. Mount Baker's stirrings are causing some uneasiness in the town of Concrete (pop. 600), which lies at the mountain's base. While there is little chance that the town will suffer the fate of ancient Pompeii, the U.S. Forest Service has been forced to close surrounding areas to hikers, campers and skiers, and has thus driven away much of the tourist trade that the town depends upon for its livelihood.

Mount Baker first began to stir from its long sleep last March, when unusual amounts of steam or smoke began rising from the Sherman Crater, a 1,600-ft.-wide depression left just below the summit by an earlier eruption. Fearful that the steam could melt snow and trigger giant mudslides, the Forest Service closed the shoreline of Baker Lake, shut down several nearby campgrounds, and put much of the mountain off limits.

By August, geologists studying the crater rim found that steam escaping from widening fumaroles. or vents, had caused considerable melting of snow and weakened several large rock outcroppings; they warned that as much as 40 million cu. yds. of rock, a mass three times greater than that of Grand Coulee Dam, could break loose, slide into the lake and trigger flooding. In September, researchers from Eastern Washington State College, wearing oxygen masks to protect them from the sulfurous fumes, made their way through cave passages in a 140-ft.-thick layer of ice and snow to reach the center of the crater. There they found a football-field-sized lake of steaming acid, some of which is leaking into streams fed by the mountain's melting snow.

Hot Air. In an attempt both to record and to foretell Baker's behavior, geologists are trying to emulate the Russians, who recently correctly predicted a volcanic eruption on the Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka. The scientists have installed seismographs on the mountain's flanks to detect the tremors that are believed to precede an eruption and set up instruments to measure the flow and the temperatures of gases escaping from the fumaroles. They are also using sensitive tiltmeters to determine if the mountain is swelling, a phenomenon that could presage an eruption.

So far, the data collected on Mount Baker's slopes have been inconclusive, and many people in Concrete believe that authorities have overstated the potential dangers of the current activity. "All this steam business is a lot of hot air," says Robert Fader, publisher of the Concrete Herald. "Baker has steamed before and it will steam again."

The scientists studying the mountain concede that their activity and reports have proved costly to Concrete. But the Forest Service insists that placing threatened areas off limits makes eminent sense. Mount Baker does not have to awaken fully and erupt in order to be deadly. All the restless giant need do to cause a disaster is to shrug off its snowy and earthen coverings.

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