Mount St. Helens - Monitor Ridge — Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025

This was a "bucket list" hike and I am so pleased I finally made it happen.  My friend and I obtained our hiking permits on July 1 for our August 13 hike, and crossed our fingers for good weather.

We left our hotel in Woodland, WA at 3:30 AM and arrived at the trailhead at about 4:45 AM.   Although you will surely have directions to the trailhead with you or use GPS, there are directional signs at relevant intersections to "Climbers Bivouac" that will provide reassurance you're on the right route.  All roads to the trailhead are paved, easily drivable in pitch darkness, and in good condition EXCEPT for the final two miles:  the section on Forest Service Road 830.  It's a slog with deep ruts and gigantic potholes.  Drive carefully.  It's actually an easier drive at night with your brights on than it is in intense sun and shadows of afternoon.

As the WTA description implies, the hike can be divided into three parts:  forest, boulders, and ash.

We began our hike in the pre-dawn darkness 4:55 AM.  One headlamp for each of us was plenty sufficient for the nice, wide, well-defined opening two miles of the hike through nondescript PNW forestland.  Dawn broke as we neared the end of the forested section of the hike, with some openings in the trees providing some stunning views of Mt. Hood to the south and Mt. Adams to the east, both glowing in the early light.  We cleared the forest at almost exactly the one-hour mark, emerging into the boulder section of the hike.

There is no official trail up the boulder field, but frequently spaced white poles mark the general ascent.  Find your own way.  The white poles generally line a ridgetop, but the going is easier in the lower ground paralleling the ridge on the left (west) (and if you are hiking in the morning, going this way will keep you in the shade of the ridge).  In fact, in some areas you may find a sandy routing that might possibly be called a "trail" under a generous definition of the word "trail".

Eventually you will encounter a monitoring station, which an adjacent explanatory sign labels as a "Network of the Americas Scientific GPS instrument".  From this point onward, you will still encounter some boulders, but for the most part you are in the "dust and ash" section of the hike.  There are no more white poles in the uppermost section of the mountain, but there is some semblance of a trail and in any case all you really need to know at this point is "go up".  

On this particular day, the winds were just brutal starting from the GPS station and upward.  We encountered one group heading down that discouragingly told us they had "given up" due to being sandblasted on the upper slopes.  But we decided to press on nonetheless.  The winds were indeed nasty and the blowing ash was annoying, and the noise of the wind made conversation very difficult.  We finally reached the summit.  The views were amazing but the wind was brutal, pelting us with ash and dust.  We did not even think of breaking out our summit snacks because eating anything would have meant eating 50% ash and dust.  We snapped a few photos and 360-degree videos, and headed down.

The descent through the ash goes very quickly.  You can kind of shuffle your feet through the dust (sort of "ash surfing").  By the time we were about halfway down the ash field, the winds were subsiding.  And by the time we reached the boulder field, they had calmed to a gentle but pleasant breeze.

The most grueling part of the hike is arguably the descent through the boulder field.  You'll have to tread carefully and enjoy the "puzzle" of finding the smartest route down at both a micro-level ("how do I travel the next 30 feet") and a macro-level ("what's my overall descent plan?").  This is not a pleasant hike for those with bad knees.

Finally, we reached the bottom of the boulder field and re-entered the forest.  At this point, we were both anxious to reach the car.  The forested portion of the trail seemed like it took forever, but then we mercifully reached the trailhead and enjoyed the cold drinks we had in an ice-filled cooler.

A few comments:

1. Some recommend gaiters for the ashy portion of the trail.  My hiking partner and I brought them but did not wear them.  In my opinion, they are not necessary if you have decent hiking boots that cover the ankles, decent socks, and sufficiently long pants.  Save the backpack capacity.

2. I'd recommend hiking poles.  They work very nicely in the ashy section.

3. I also recommend a pair of work gloves, which are nice for gripping rocks on both the ascent and descent of the boulder field.

4. The forested section is easily navigated in the dark with headlamps.  However, I would think that the boulder field would be very difficult in the dark, so I would not recommend a start so early that you will be in the dark for the boulder field.  That said, we did encounter a pair of guys coming down from the summit who said they had started their hike at 12:55 AM.  So apparently it is POSSIBLE.

5. The trailhead parking lot is sizable and capacity did not seem to be an issue on this mid-August Wednesday.

6. I brought 5 liters of water and also a 28 oz. (0.828 liter) bottle of Powerade.  In retrospect this was too much as I drank only 2L the water.  But I suppose it is better to bring it and not drink it than to not drink it and need it.

Timeline (two males in our mid-50s, not fitness mavens but in reasonable shape):
Hike start: 4:55 AM
Reach top of forested section:  5:58 AM (1 hour 3 minutes from start)
Reach GPS monitoring station (roughly top of boulder field):  8:05 AM (3 hours 10 minutes from start)
Reach crater rim:  9:30 AM (4 hours 35 minutes from start)
Begin descent:  9:47 AM
Return to top of forest:  12:57 PM (3 hours 10 minutes from top)
Return to trailhead:  1:59 PM (4 hours 12 minutes from top)

Net duration car-to-car:  9 hours 4 minutes