Climbing Mt. St. Helens

Ever since I was very young, I was always fascinated by Mt. St. Helens. It is a beautiful mountain with a history of both disaster and rebirth. I went camping there about 10 years ago and had to pass up an opportunity to climb it. Recently, I recieved an extra day off of work and as soon as I looked a calendar and realized that our day off was on May 18th, I recommended that a group of us climb Mt. St Helens. 6 of us wanted to go so we bought our climbing permits to join the 100 climbers that were allowed on the mountain that day. For those of you who didn't know, 27 years ago on May 18th was when Mt. St. Helens erupted.

After a few weeks of preparation and anxiety, the day finally came to drive down to the mountain. We drove down on the evening of the 17th and made camp at the Marble Mount Snow Park. We pitched camp at about 9:00pm and got right to sleep. At 5:30am, we woke up and packed up all our gear. At 6:15 we hit the trail. Everyone was in good spirits and we made good time as we marched through the trees on a wooded trail. After a short mile, the trail became almost completely covered with snow and I had still not had a good view of the mountain. About 2 miles in we popped out of the tree line and hit an open meadow where we had our first break. This was also the first good view of the mountain and the path we were about to attempt.

At this point it was pretty warm out and most of us removed our layers down to t-shirts, got out our sunglasses, and put on sunscreen. This is where the climb really started. Very quickly, the trail got steeper. There were large boulders surrounding the ashy trail which was skirted by snow fields. We climbed up the rocks and ash when possible but at some point we had to settle for hiking in the snow. Climbing in the snow makes it really hard to judge distances. A few of us were getting very tired with about 2000 ft. of elevation to go. All we could do to keep motivated was to pick another patch of rocks and try to make it to them.

The last 1000 ft was pure snow. No breaks, just a grueling climb on some of the steepest slopes we had seen yet. About 500 ft. from the top I looked back and saw a cold front blowing clouds literally right at us. They came in fast and switched what was a beauful day with full visiblity into visibility of less than 20 feet. I could no longer see the person in front of me.

We finally got to the top but had to stay 15 ft. away from the volcanic crater. A cornice had formed which made it unsafe to get near the edge. Luckily we were told by some other hikers that a short hike around the rim to the east would get us to a spot where we could get right to the edge. We went there settled down for a quick lunch and photoshoot. We put on all the extra layers we had because of how cold it was up there. It was freezing my PB&J as I ate it.

Very quickly after we finished eating we decided to get out of the cold. We headed back to where we intially summited and then started sliding down the mountain. Sliding was well worth doing but it was extremely cold and painful at times. I got soaked to the bone. Most of the way down we either slid or ran through the snow fields. It was amazing how much distance we could cover going down vs going up. Once we got out of the snow and found the trail it was just a matter of hiking out through the forest again. At 3:30pm we got back to the cars. The trip took us 6 hours to get to the top, 2 1/2 hours to get down and a round trip time of 9 1/4 hours. The climb was great. Just enough to kick my butt and still be doable. The weather was beautiful except for at the very top and the views were just amazing. I would do this hike again but I think I'll give myself a few years to recover :)