Somewhere in February, I said something about climbing Mt St. Helens. Since it was the end of May we did it. It turns out that the normal climbing route, the Monitor Ridge Route (which started at Climbers Bivouac) was closed due to snow. So, left with little choice, we had to take the Worm Flows Route(know as the Winter Route). Instead of 4500 feet in 5 miles we ended up doing 5600 feet in 6 miles (for a whooping total of 12 miles).
We woke up at 2:00 AM in the morning of the hike (30th May). It took a while to eat & do the last minute preparations & pack, so around 4:30 we were on our way. At 7:30 AM we were arriving at the Lone Fir Resort to pick up our climbing permits (22$/permit - bought almost 4 months in advance) and to register for the climb - turns out there is a limited number of 100 permits/day, so a bit of planning goes a long way. After registering, eating and sipping a cup of coffee we were on our way to the trail head. The trail starts in theMarble Mountain Snow-Parkat an altitude of 2700 feet.
We started on the trail at around 9:00 AM. (took a while to change our gear, check the backpacks, not to mention that the unfortunate GPS unit that we have managed to get us lost - wasting us around 15 minutes until we figured out it had no idea about the road we should take). With everything that we took (water, food, extra clothes, photo cameras) I think the backpacks were around 20 lbs each.
The first portion of the trail (around 1 mile) was pretty easy and with little to no snow. After that the snow started creeping onto the trail with certain areas being completely frozen. At that point we’ve put on the spikes that we bought in anticipation of such conditions. That coupled with the trekking poles gave us enough stability to continue with minimal effort, at least until we reached the timberline.
The landscape after that was surreal. You can see where the lava flowed down the mountain and the effects of the eruptions are clearly visible. As we continued to go further the quantity of snow increased and the speed of the wind also increased. Not to mention the slope increase :) From the somewhat clear weather at the trail head we started experiencing heavy mist and high speed winds near the summit (visibility near zero up there). Regardless we pushed ahead taking only short brakes needed for snacks and hydration.
The hike up took around 6.5 hours and coming down took around 3 hours. The thing that we really liked was that from a physical point of view we were prepared for this hike (at no point during or after the hike we felt the massive effort associated with this hike as a burden). And we did have a methodical approach to preparing for this hike so this was not a surprise for us. Around 7:00 PM we were back at the Lone Fir confirming in the climb register that we made it back safely from the volcano.We went back home.
As a side note: if you ever consider doing something like this, bring and wear quality sunglasses and bring and use a quality sunscreen lotion. Although we knew about this and we did bring the sunscreen with us we didn’t use it and got some pretty nasty sunburns on our faces. The thing is that we didn’t realize how strong the sun was reflecting from the snow, probably due to the chilling wind that was blowing. Don’t do the same mistake.
Pictures of the hike to follow shortly.