Mount St. Helens - Worm Flows Route — Saturday, Jun. 1, 2013

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

This was my first mountain climbing. I'm usually just hiking. But it was fascinating. I started from Marble Mountain Snow Park (following blue diamonds marks) at 7:00 AM. It was pretty nice weather. Not too sunny, not too cloudy. There was some snow in forest, but not too much. After reaching rocks, snow disappeared. I forgot to cross "river" on chocolate waterfalls, so I just crossed it somewhere further. When I reached steep ascent, snow appeared again. I was using rocks as much as possible to climb up, avoiding snow - I had just light outfit (more summer than winter). I was following those wooden rods, because I didn't know the way. Somewhere here I passed by last group which I met on my way up. When I reached radio station, rocks almost disappeared and I had to walk in snow. There were many paths of steps, but not all of them were good to use - there were big gaps between single steps (and I had no snowshoes). Not too far from top clouds began and I saw almost nothing. When I reached top, I saw like 2 meters ahead and I almost felt down - because I didn't see edge. But fortunatelly I stopped. It was really cloudy / misty up there so I saw almost nothing and couldn't shoot almost nothing with my camera. After a while I decided to go back down. I fortunatelly took some plastic bag with me, so I was glissading almost whole way to radio aerial (with some walking) and a little further (down). Somewhere on my way I lost plastic bag so I just sat on snow and slide down - it was really fun. When I reached no-snow zone, my knees were really tired (after descending), but I made it to the parking lot. Distance walked: 16 km (10.25 miles) Elevation: 1715 meters (5626 feet) Time total: 6 hours 12 minutes (up ~ 4 hours, down ~ 2 hours)