What a brutal hike! We haven't had any mountaineering snow experience, so this was quite challenging. We got to the trailhead at 4:00 AM to see the sunrise. Even getting to the trailhead that early wasn't enough. By the time we got to the exposed part, it was already bright out, but there were too many clouds on the horizon to see a sunrise anyway. The sun is rising so early that I would recommend getting to the trailhead around 3:45 AM or earlier.

Permits are now sold out, so anyone planning to hike via Worm Flows Route that hasn't gotten a permit yet might need to wait until mid-June to hike the Monitor Ridge Route (the summer route). No snow until a mile, but patchy. The way becomes snow-covered two miles from the trailhead. The Worm Flows junction has poor quality directions. Behind the "Worm Flows Climbing Route" Sign, there's a trail that looked like the climbing route, again we've never done this one before, so we took what looked like the way. 

We followed the false trail for a half mile before realizing that we were on the wrong path. We didn't notice others taking the right trail about 50 yards to the left of the sign because we were the first climbers to get out on the trail. By the time we noticed our mistake, it was too late. We had already made progress and decided not to go back. When you see the Worm Flows sign, go about 50 yards further left to the true trail. A bad mistake that cost us about an hour more climbing.

Because of our mistake, I can't tell you much about the way coming up. We made it to the summit at about 12:30, I believe. Don't step anywhere between 5 feet of the edge because of the cornice. We didn't go to the true summit because it's another half mile from when you reach the ridge, and the weather conditions were bad. Glissading was so much fun. We made it to about 4,000 feet before it was not steep enough to glissade anymore. If you want to glissade, then you have to take off your crampons. Otherwise, your ankle will snap like a twig if you try stopping yourself with crampons on. We didn't have ice axes, so stopping yourself in some spots isn't easy.

Snow was a little sloppy, so we didn't lose control coming down, but I would've been more careful if snow were icy. If you have any questions, just put them in the comments. Also, Ape Caves just opened after a year of it being closed. See separate trip report for that. Happy Hiking.

Well, we sadly fell short of the rim by around 500ft, but we had some pretty brutal weather and it just wasn't worth it any more.  Oh well, we still had a blast and discovered that glissading is pretty much the funnest thing ever 😆

We will be back MSH... HOPEFULLY we can get another permit and have better weather.  First, long awaited trip was a bust for completion. 

Had a great time hiking this yesterday! Trail is snow-free until about a mile in, then there's a very nice boot path until you cross over the ridge to the west of Swift Creek. I do recommend staying over the trail as much as you can around Swift Creek as the snow over rocks on the sides is melting out fast and people are starting to punch through.

Much of the ridge along the Worm Flows route is melted out so you could scramble up the rocks but walking on the snow was a lot easier. We kicked steps the entire way and never ended up using our crampons. The final 500 vertical ft below the rim were a bit icy and crampons may have been helpful there but we got by fine without. We had originally planned to tag the true summit (about 0.5 miles to the west of where the climbing route meets the rim) but it would've required downclimbing quite a bit so decided against it - if this is your plan, I would head to the west further down before you reach the rim.

Started down around 11am - snow was really slushy so could only glissade in the steeper parts (but the glissading there was fantastic!), and it was easy to plunge step between glissade chutes. Could basically glissade all the way down to the "climbing permits required" sign, but there were a couple of spots where rocks are starting to poke through so be sure to scout the chute before starting. Also make sure you stay on route - there are some glissade chutes and boot prints over on Monitor Ridge.

Overall a great day - there were low hanging clouds around the mountain which made the views really dramatic. Pretty windy in some sections, but when the wind wasn't blowing the sun made it HOT. We slept at the trailhead the night before and were surprised to find that it gets really buggy around sunset - definitely bring some netting or bug spray if you plan to hang out. We left our cars at 5am, summited around 11am, and then got back to our cars just before 3pm - we took lots of breaks along the way, and were overall really happy with starting around 5am as we only had to use our headlamps for about 15 minutes.

Sunrise summit of MSH. Set foot on the trail at 0125 and summited by 0815. Spectacular day and optimal weather conditions made for an epic time. No snow in the parking lot, and it appears on the trail for about a mile in. The trail is obvious up and down. Plenty of good glissade chutes. Microspikes, gaiters, and trekking poles.

Perfect weather today, light breeze and sunny!
Left the trailhead at 2:30am, had firm snow even though it’s been warm. Trail is completely snow covered a mile from the trailhead., there’s one section of the ridge after 4200ft that’s melted and will get you almost to the monitor. There was a solid set of kick steps after the monitor station that made the ascent easier. Snow began getting sloppy around 11am, made for great glissading! We were able to glissade down about 4,000ft, some chutes are beginning to get rocks melting through. As always, lots of chutes to choose from, a lot of them go too far west, bring a GPS.