Mount St. Helens - Worm Flows Route — Saturday, May. 5, 2018

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

We arrived Friday night late after the pain of traffic all night. Slept in the car and had a 1:20 wake up for a 2:15 start. There is still snow in the parking lot and at trailhead. It gets consistent after the first mile. It never got cold enough to freeze that snow so it was a slushy mess. After a couple miles in the forest we got out of the trees. We put on our crampons at the “permits required above here” sign. They helped tremendously at this point even though it wasn’t super steep. From here it’s just up, up and up! There were some exposed rocks we scrambled over and then we’re able to crawl back down to the snow. Was much faster to hike up the snow then the rock portion. Most of the way there was a good boot path or easy to make steps. We took a good break at the weather station and then kept going. The false summits really mess with your mind in the end. Just keep pushing and you’ll eventually get there. It snowed on us for about 10 minutes at the top and was very cold and windy. We got to the top at 8:30. We couldn’t stay long because it was so cold. The top was very icy so we did not glissade down there. Took out the ice axe to help with the descent of the steep portion. Once the snow softened up we could glissade. We put on the rain pants and helmet and made sure everything on our packs was secure. We glissaded down 4,000 feet! The best glissading I’ve ever done! The snow was soft and not icy, so it was easy to control speed. We saw hundred of people going up as we were going down. Snow was soft then so probably made it even harder to climb up. After glissading we hiked the 3 miles back to the car and made it back by 12. Absolutely start early like we did for firmer snow and beating the crowds. Snowshoes are not helpful at this point. Crampons are best.