Almost entire route is snow covered - starting from the marble mount sno-park parking lot. The snow is fairly packed and there is a good boot path all the way to the peak and also some markers on the way. We saw people without any crampons, but that would be highly recommended and an ice-axe too, especially for the last thousand fee of elevation or so where it's fairly icy. While coming down, there are some nice and long glissade paths - just be careful and keep an eye on the trail to make sure you are not moving away from the regular trail! We didn't see anyone actually using snow-shoes and I don't think that'll be of much use either. Oh, Gaitors would be very useful.

Flickr: http://bit.ly/mt-st-helens The boys got their exercise yesterday so I could do this climb today. Ever since our failed attempt on Mount Hood I have been itching to do another hike like this. I missed the opportunity to climb Rainier and Adams with Piotr previously. So when he asked me join him and his friends Javier and Will, I said yes without hesitation. Having driven and hiked all over the Cascades in the last three years, the 3 1/2-hour drive to Mt. St. Helens didn’t seem all that long. The four of us went down in my car with only three permits. Lucky for us, we were able to get another one at the registration office after a couple of people had backed out that morning. The road to the standard route at Monitor Ridge was still snowed in so we weren’t able to get through. After talking to a few snowmobilers we realized that the rest of the climbers had been advised to take the winter route at Worm Flows. After we parked and geared up, the four of us were on the trail by 10:30. Nothing too eventful for the first two miles until I saw the mountain for the first time. Everyone else in the group had already seen the mountain so it was a big deal for me. None of us had gotten more than five hours of sleep the night before and the group energy level felt below average. About three miles in, I decided to get ahead since I had the lightest load and it was easier for me to maneuver. On the way up I passed quite a few skiers, snowboarders, and people like me who would eventually glissade down the mountain. We got a late start, so most climbers were already on their way down, which means there would be barely anyone at the crater rim. The views of Mount Hood and Mount Adams were just amazing. The group disappeared from my view after I got to the radio tower, and I kept going in hope of getting to the top at a decent hour, hopefully by 4 o’clock. The final 300-foot climb felt like an eternity, the hardest part for me mentally. The picture of Spirit Lake I once saw on flickr (courtesy of bkraai2003) kept me going, and I was determined to see it for myself. When I finally saw the lake and the south side of Mount Rainier for the very first time, it instantly took my mind off the pain from the blisters on my ankles. My first successful, nontechnical volcanic climb! It was also the first time seeing other volcanoes above clouds all around me. There were cornices on the crater rim, so I got as far as I could and snapped a good photo of the lava dome. Everything felt so surreal and incredibly, indescribably beautiful at the top. Not knowing if the others were ever going to show up, I stuck around for a while and snapped as many photos as I could. After forty minutes of being in awe and admiring the views, and with no sign of the others, I started heading back down. On the way down I passed Piotr at 400’ below the summit, missed Will as he was on the other side of the ridge. The trip back down the mountain was mostly done by glissading and it only took an hour to get to the base. Then it was another hour from the base back to the car. Javier was waiting for us in the car when I got back, together we waited another two hours before Piotr and Will eventually showed up. We all made it back safe and sound, yay! Now onto our 3 1/2-hour drive back to Seattle.

We camped overnight at the parking lot. Around 3am, a bunch of snow mobilers came and started revving their snow mobiles over and over and yelling and swearing. Also, when people start really early in the morning, you can hear them getting ready and talking. Last year, we had slept in the car, and while that was more uncomfortable, at least if we had done that again, we could have just driven away to a quieter spot. So if you have a larger car, you might think about just sleeping in the car. Also, the shelter that used to be there burned down. Lame. But there are two really nice toilets there (they don't smell! and they have toilet paper!). We started about 6:30. There's snow from the very beginning of the trail. We had both crampons and snowshoes: the crampons were helpful on the way up and the snowshoes were helpful on the way down. The snow was pretty slushy until the last 1,000 feet or so at the very end, when it got a lot better. It was pretty overcast most of the time, but also very very bright. We applied sunblock several times and still ended up getting burned. So please be extra careful about applying sunblock, and don't forget to protect your lips too! A few times visibility got very low, but there are plenty of well-defined tracks to follow. And the sky did clear out for a few minutes at a time throughout the day. It was really warm almost the entire day. There weren't very many people that day, maybe 30-50? Considering it was Memorial Day weekend, that seems really low, but maybe people were scared off by the weather forecast. At any rate, I think most people who started in the morning made it to the top.

An unusually high risk of avalanche was reported for this week for all of the South Cascades, including St. Helens. We set out Sunday morning from Portland at 7am, not anticipating a likely summit due to weather and avalanche risk. The roads were clear all the way to Marble Mtn Sno-Park (the road to Climber's Bivouac/Monitor Ridge is not expected to be opem till late June or early July due to our late snow falls). We set out on the trail in snowshoes, and were very happy we had them since the snow was the consistency of mashed potatoes for the entire hike, and post-holing would have been a problem otherwise. The weather was rainy and fairly mild until just above the treeline, then the rain turned to an unpleasant mixture of sleet and ice. Winds were high and visibility was poor. There was definite evidence of cornice fracturing and snow slippage from the ridges around our route, but the first portion of the Worm Flows route seemed fairly protected from avalanche. I was a little concerned for some snowboarders who were looking to summit then ride down, with their risk of triggering an avalanche definitely higher than ours, especially riding down off route - hopefully they made it down OK. We slogged up the trail until ~5000ft before bad weather and poor visiblity turned us back. Better safe than sorry - we'll be back to take this mountain another day!