Mount St. Helens - Monitor Ridge — Thursday, Jun. 20, 2019

Climbed Mount Saint Helens via Monitor Ridge. Our initial plan was to start just after midnight and summit for the sunrise, but after seeing the forecast we decided to head out around 7:30am. It ended up dumping a few inches of fresh snow the night before our climb and a group exiting the trailhead as we were beginning said they had to turn around at about 4:30am due to blizzard conditions. It should all be melted out here pretty soon. Even with the snow the ridge is easy to follow, just go post to post and you should have no problems. We opted out of bringing our ice axes because we had no intentions of glissading. I suppose you could glissade just be mindful of the rocks. Only gear I’d recommend other than your essentials are poles, gaiters, and some gardening gloves for scrambling. Views at the summit were socked in so we tried to wait it out for about an hour with no luck. Great climb nonetheless!