Mount St. Helens - Worm Flows Route — Tuesday, May. 15, 2018

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

I have a personal complaint to file with all of my friends who have done this hike and failed to tell me about how incredibly epic it was. I truly had no clue what I was in for! We highly recommend car camping the night before and getting on the trail around 4 o’clock in the morning. We hit the trail at 4:20 a.m. with headlamps and we put on the microspikes about 30 minutes after that. The sun began to reveal the mountain through the trees around 5:30 a.m. We exited the tree line and followed a dusty trail for about 2 miles along the worm tubes route. At the end of the dusty trail, it looked as if a trail went up a rocky ridge line, which is an option that you shouldn’t follow. We skirted down the ridge and hit the boot path in the snow and it was much safer. With it being so early, the snow was still hard and easy to hike on. When you get an earlier start, the snow is easier to hike on because it refreezes through the night; if you wait too late then the snow starts to melt and becomes difficult and miserable to climb. We trudged up the mountain for about 2.5 hours after that and the views were spectacular every step of the way. We could see Mt. Adams to the East and Mt. Hood to the South the entire time. There is an antennae half way up the mountain where you can get mobile reception for a bit if you need it for an emergency. At the top, Mt. Rainier became visible and the crater of the great Mt. St. Helens revealed itself. Breath taking. Do not step too close to the edge of the snow that looks over the crater as it is corniced and can collapse at any time, especially when extra weight is on it. While the true summit is .25 more miles to the West, we stayed near the top for an hour. It took us about one hour to glissade back down from about 3.5 miles. It was incredible. Please be sure to be careful with which glissade chute you choose as some of the veer too far to the West and others have exposed rocks in them. BE CAREFUL. Hug the trail and don’t get too excited and forget to pay attention to where you are going. The hike back to the parking lot did seem nearly endless but altogether, we were on a mountain high the entire time. It was an incredible sight. Pictures do not capture the beauty. Get your permits and enjoy this incredible hike! What you need: - GPS device or GAIA maps app in case you lose the trail from glissading too far to the West and lose the trail. - Sun block SPF 50+ or sun protective arm and hand sleeves/gloves. - Ice axe of trekking poles for balance up the hill and for braking going down the glissade chutes. - RAIN PANTS. Use these for glissading, the garbage bags are wasteful and don’t do the trick. - Kahtoola Microspikes. Crampons will work too. Forget about the yak tracks: they don’t work. Also- snow shoes aren’t helpful on this one. - Tons of water. - Polarized sunglasses. - Headlamps. - Gloves. - Layer appropriate to your own body comfort. - A camera!