Mount St. Helens - Worm Flows Route — Thursday, May. 10, 2018

Hike Mt St Helens for the first time and it was a doozy!  The weather forecast wasn't great - rain at the bottom and snow at the top - but we decided to go for it anyway given we only had permits for that day.  Got to the trailhead around 9:45.  Lots of trudging through soft snow for the first ~3 miles.  Then about another mile bouldering up a rock field, which was a welcome reprieve from the snow.  the rest of the way is a long slog up the snowfield with not a great footpath to follow.  Snow came in and reduced visibility.  We were on a tight timeline having to get back to Seattle and ended up turning around 400 ft shy of the summit at about 2:45pm.  Grrrr.  But it was the right thing to do - total whiteout, unsure of conditions and how much further we had to go, and it was brutal.  I told my husband it was harder than the Rainier summit....but he just said i forget how hard that was.  In either case, Mt St Helens is savage.  :)  Glissading down was hysterical and so much fun.  Had i known how easy it was to get down, maybe i could have pushed on and made it to the true summit.  Got back to the car at 5pm.  Guess i'll have to come back and get it another day....