Beautiful conditions to summit Mount St Helens. strongly recommend snowshoes and/or light crampons (microspikes). Snow cover the entire way from Marble Mountain Sno-Park parking lot to summit. Above the treeline the snow was soft by late afternoon, so snowshoes helped alleviate post-holes once we glissaded all we could on the way down. Don't forget contractor bags for glissading (and bring a few to share). Busy route. Jealous of those on AT gear -- it looked like a great way to go! Be sure to check avalanche conditions.

Summit of my St. Helens 2018. Good hike up and ride back down for the ride of my life. Snowboarded all the way to the car

St. Helens. What a majestic, cruel mountain for a beginner - the whole "It's always farther and steeper than it looks" adage didn't prove wrong. 

We (three of us - two guys, one girl, all in our 30s) arrived at the trailhead on Friday night around 10:30pm. Our friend (guy) has summited a bunch of other mountains in Washington and can summit Helens in under 4 hours, so we took to his advice for when to leave and climb and such. He skinned up and skied back down, while we brought along snowshoes/crampons. 

We got a late start (8am) heading out, and had to stop several times so that I could fiddle around with my mountaineering boots, as it was their maiden climb. (I'd been wearing them while training at the gym, but hadn't hiked in them yet) I could feel a few hot spots within an hour, so stopped again to tape up (Leukotape for the win!) just after Chocolate Falls. 

From there, we were good heading up, but MAN. It really doesn't ever end, does it?! 

Snowshoes were super helpful all the way from the trailhead - we saw tons of people postholing on the way up, which seems like a lot of extra effort. The heel steps were clutch, too - it felt so much easier with them! We swapped out snowshoes for crampons just before we reached the seismometer spot, but easily could have kept them on even longer. 

The weather was great all the way up until the summit - by the time we got up (seven hours later, around 3pm), it had gotten pretty overcast and windy. We didn't venture past the false summit as there was only a handful of people up there, and our buddy had already headed out to ski, so weren't trying to collapse any cornices that day. Hung out for about twenty minutes, then made our way back down. 

We got really lucky in that we were able to glissade almost the entire way down, which was awesome. It was my first time glissading, and while a bit scary to start, it never felt dangerous and it was a perfect spot to practice slowing down and stopping with my ice axe (I even did a little bit of self-arrest practice along the way). Put snowshoes back on near Chocolate Falls, which was needed - looked like a postholing nightmare around there!

Would definitely recommend checking the weather and bringing along snowshoes, crampons, and an ice axe, especially if you're unsure of the conditions. It would have been horrible getting up there without snowshoes - so much so that I can imagine I'd have wanted to turn around. 

Overall, Helens was both exactly what I was expecting and so much more: I expected it to be difficult, but didn't expect for it to feel like a lifetime of climbing. I expected it to be more "wilderness-y"; I didn't expect it to e a conga line from bottom to top. I expected sharp drop offs and terror glissading - I didn't expect for it to have almost completely great runoffs along the way. All said and done, I feel super proud to have climbed a mountain, and am excited to come back again (and to try others!). 

I could not have asked for a better first ascent. After poring over weather reports all week, I was expecting lots of snow and rain. Turned out to be gorgeous, with lots of sun.

We started late, around 7am. Since we were all beginners, we took our time getting to the top, summiting around 2pm.

Snow was pretty soft on the way back down, but the glissade was fantastic all the way to the treeline.