Finding Your Way

Rules & Regulations

The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument is a unique education, research and scientic resource. Visiting Mount St. Helens is like visiting no other place on Earth. The volcanic features are irreplaceable. Join us in our commitment to protect, understand, and appreciate this special place.

Resource Protection Warning

Off-Trail Travel: Off trail travel is strictly prohibited within many areas of the National Volcanic Monument. Students who go off trail can crush colonizing plants, and each individual plant can make a tremendous difference. In one location where nothing survived the eruption, scientists established a research plot around the first plant to colonize the area. Over the next 17 years, these scientists hand counted the life and death of over 200,000 plants. Each plant in that plot owes its existence to that first colonizing plant. Please keep students on developed trails. In some areas there are substantial fines for off trail travel.

Collecting Monument Features: Collecting Monument Features: Collecting natural features such as rocks, plants and sticks is strictly prohibited within the National Volcanic Monument. If you need rocks or plants contact the Forest Service about collection permits for educational purposes.

Protect Our Wildlife: Help keep wildlife wild. Feeding wild animals within the Monument is prohibited. Ground squirrels, chipmunks, gray jays, and other wildlife lose their ability to forage when fed human foods, and become addicted to junk food like drug addicts. These animals often become a nuisance, and are usually very unhealthy (obese). In addition, many wildlife species will bite the hand that feeds them, and are known carriers of serious diseases.

Pack It In! / Pack It Out!: Removing garbage from rural locations is very expensive, so the Forest Service decided to use its limited budget to provide visitors with other important services. Please pack out all of your trash, and recycle your bottles and aluminum cans. Do not throw trash into the pit toilets, because it has to be removed by some unfortunate Forest Service employee.

Title 36 of the Federal Code of Federal Regulations provides for fines and penalties ranging up to a $5,000 file and/or six months in jail for each violation.

Safety Warning & Visitor Behavior

Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument can be a dangerous place. Mount St. Helens is still classified as an active volcano. In addition, there are trail hazards, water hazards, cliff hazards, etc. The failure to abide by safety regulations has been fatal to some Monument visitors, including areas described here in the Mount St. Helens Teacher's Corner web site.

Teachers and chaperones are responsible not only for their own personal safety, but the safety of their students as well. Teachers and chaperones are responsible for the behavior of their students. You may be asked to cut short your Monument field trip because of inappropriate behavor of anyone within your group.

Safety is the responsibility of everyone visiting Mount St. Helens.