I just happened to be up in the area on business a couple of years after the blast. Rented a car and drove out to MSH.
AMAZING the destructive power. Driving along, miles from the mountain, there was a sign that read, “Entering blast zone”.
Trees were beginning to pop back up through the rubble, but the trees that were standing before the eruption were laying like match sticks all facing out away from the mountain. Pixie stick style.
Put me in awe.
I was there 7 years after the explosion. Trees were strewn on the ground facing away from the mountain, as you said. There were also a lot of small trees which apparently had survived because they had been covered with snow at the time of the eruption.
Lava dust from MSH was deposited on my hometown in Southwestern Montana and I still have tube full of the dust my father collected and sent to me. It deposited, if I remember correctly, an inch or more of the dust,
600 miles away.