Mount St. Helens - Worm Flows Route — Sunday, May. 15, 2011

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

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!