did the warm flow route up mount st helens today. left seattle around 230am and drove to the lone fir resort to pick up our passes. opens at 6, from there we went to marble sno-park and hit the trail. first two miles of the hike are through forest, steady uphill, but nothing significant. believe around 1200 feet for the 2 mile trek. few snow patches, but mostly typical forest trail. after breaking out of the forest, you enter some rock/boulder fields. if you hiked during the summer from the climbers bivouac, it is not as many boulders to climb. this is a few boulders, but mostly ash, loose dirt that you climb for about 2 miles. once you get done with this portion, the rest is kicking steps and headed up til you reach the summit. i believe the dirt and snow portion is 3.5 miles and about 4200 feet of elevation gain. the snow was soft enough where kicking steps was not a problem. could easily have hiked up to the summit in boots and sticks. crampons, microspikes were not needed. i did see people using them but nobody in our foursome used them. after spending some time up top, glissading down was the best route. easiest bet was to just find a chute somebody made and follow there tracks. total time was 8.5 hours and 11 miles. with a solid break at the summit.

Perfect weather for this Sunday hike: cool with low clouds in the early morning, sunshine and a chill wind by the time we got to the snowy slopes. Gorgeous views from the top; couldn't have asked for a better day for this climb! Departed Marble Mountain trailhead @ 05:30, made it to the summit in about 6 hours (with rest/snack breaks). The return trip took about 2.5 hours thanks to some long glissade runs. We didn't find snowshoes or crampons to be necessary, though ski poles and micro spikes helped with traction on the way up and we used ice axes for glissading on the way down. We should have worn heavy-duty mountaineering boots for kicking steps, however. For the last (and steepest) portion of the ascent, hikers converging from multiple points had beat a pretty good boot path into the slope. On the way down we had to watch out for rocks in some of the glissade chutes.

Departed the trailhead at 5:45am and by the time we reached the snow we had to kick our own steps most of the way. Reached the summit at 11:45 am and were back to our car by 2:45pm. The snow was very soft by 11am...too soft for crampons (microspikes would have been better) and too soft to glissade all the way down. It was a gorgeous day for a climb though! :)

Having not climbed anything larger than Granite Mt. previously, this was a bit of a stretch for me, but fortunately I was with friends with mountaineering experience. We arrived at the trail head at 6:50 and summited at 11:45. Hikers that arrived later in the day had much softer snow to slog up. Even with the firm snow, after the 7.5 miles up and 5700 ft gain I was so tired I could barely chew my lunch. We had nice weather going up and coming down, but visibility was not much more than 30 ft at the top. We had niece views of Mt. Hood, Jefferson and Adams heading up. Our only precipitation was a little freezing rain at the summit. Due to the poor visibility at the summit, we hiked down a little before we started glissading. One hiker in another group got separated from his companions coming down and ended up off trail, but was fortunately assisted by a volunteer ranger to get back on track. Everyone in our group applied sunscreen when we got to the snow line, but I neglected to put anything on my lips, so I have a some really chapped lips to go with my sore muscles, but other than that we all came through the experience fairly well.

Well, the guides don't really say what you'll run into here- an amazing mix of experienced people, inexperienced, responsible people in good company like "Old Eye Man", and people whose actions reinforce how durable humans are. This mountain ain't my first rodeo, but for me and a lot of other permit holders, the mountain in spring with changeable weather deserves respect. Scarier are the folks who are climbing in cotton- yes! with limited or no gear when the clouds, lovely though they are, sweep in with icy winds and stinging rain. I am still haunted by one girl who stumbled past our camp at timberline the first night, looking purple cheeked, disoriented, and more than a little sick, with her husband ahead asking us to lie about the miles she still had to go at 7:30 pm, and the grandpa behind merrily saying he was able to summit but had to leave her below because she was hypothermic: no wonder since as others reported, it was cloudy, windy, and cold, and she was wearing tennis shoes and cotton sweats. I hope she's recovered, though sadly I'm guessing she will never go to the mountains again. She wasn't the only one I worried about. But for folks who came prepared, there were smiles all round, though dubious chance of views on June 2nd. A group from Spokane passed our tent off the trail in the trees at just about the end of the treeline at 3 a.m. The NWS predicted drizzly weather overnight on June 1, but instead it was quite and clear with dazzling stars and a sliver of a moon, and warm when we got up at 4. We passed two climbers who camped on the snow at up high, and they thought they heard rain or perhaps ice crystals falling on their tent, and felt wind at night. There was a weather window in the morning, but suddenly the clouds rose and began towering before us. We spied a lenticular cloud toward Adams and the ring around the sun you don't like to see. The Spokane group was descending as we were still going up toward the false summit, and told us there was no view into the crater. We'd already gotten expansive views of the forested lowlands spreading before us, impassive Mt. Hood appearing out of the clouds, and nice views of the sculpted snowfields. So we decided the last 300 feet to see more cloud cover could wait for another day. The high campers had decided on a late start, and kept going though bummed the weather was moving in, with guidance from the Spokane leader to go only as far as the footprints because they stayed off the cornice and away from the now-invisible rim. The snow got soft and sloppy as we descended; crampons that served well earlier became dangerous. We took them off and glissaded one section with decent runout when the view was good, but quit when an array of people popped up across the slopes below like bowling pins, and the boulders started decorating the borders of the path. The camps along the ridge are great, with trees for shelter and windbreak, and nice views of the mountain- the dining room would have had a front row view of Mt. Hood on a clear day. We saw a hummingbird and later found heather in bloom as a nectar source, and some huckleberry trying to flower. A grey jay found us, and ravens patrolled. We are campers at heart, and would do this trip in the same way again, enjoying a quiet night on the mountain before summiting.