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Mt. St. Helens Climb 2004
In May, Margaret, Chris, and Mark came down from Vancouver BC and we climbed Mt. St. Helens. Originally we were planning on climbing Mt Adams, and started our drive down Sunday late afternoon. That evening, in the dark, we got within 20 miles of the mountain on a small road, and hit snow. I plowed through the first bit of snow, but then we came across a large bank blocking the road. There was a guy there with his dog in an SUV, and after conferring with him we decided it was impossible to pass that point. He planned on camping there that night and hiking in the rest of the way to the mountain in the morning and climbing the NE side. We wanted to do a south side climb, and the only way to get to the trailhead was to backtrack out and go around the mountain, a 3-4 hour drive. So at that point, at 9:30PM, we decided to tackle St. Helens instead (a 2+ hour drive). To make a long story medium, we didn't get our tents up in the Helens parking lot until well after 1 AM. We were up a few hours later to start our climb, and fortunately we had a beautiful day. The snow was melted out much further than we thought, and the first half of the climb was in dirt. I was rueing my decision to hike in tele boots (can't skin up on the rocks). But, the top and view into the crater was beautiful, and we got some good turns in on the upper faces coming down.
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