Mount St. Helens - Monitor Ridge — Friday, Mar. 9, 2001

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

Mount St. Helens March 10, 2001 Dave and I drove down Friday after work to the Marble Mountain Sno-Park. It was not a very pleasant camp. Climbers, skiers, and snowboarders were all camped with snowmobilers and it was quite noisy until midnight and then again beginning at 5 a.m. One party showed up at 5 am and was oblivious to anyone being asleep even though there were tents and sleeping bags everywhere! Finally, the whole camp got up since it was no use to even try sleeping any longer. We had picked up our free permit at Jack’s on the way through, but we had to drive back to Cougar in the morning to get the 8-buck Sno-Park permit. We finally got started about 7 a.m. The trail, although snow covered, was hardpack and we didn’t use the snowshoes. We passed several parties winter camping. After 2.5 miles the trail leaves treeline and heads up Monitor Ridge to the crater. In another mile we put on our crampons as the ridge steepened. When we finally climbed out of the clouds, we saw there were about 40 people making the climb. Only Mounts Rainier, Adams, Hood, and Jefferson could be seen above the cloud layer below. There was a bit of powder near the summit, but not a good ski or snowboard day overall. On the rim, we put all our clothes on to stay warm in the wind. A couple hours earlier I had only a T-shirt on! There were fantastic cornices built all around the crater, and the wind whipped the snow into weird shapes. Several people got close enough to the edge to warrant words of caution. Dave and I could not resist going around to the northwest to try for the true summit. None of the other parties went to take a look and there were no visible tracks in the snow. We finally broke out the ice axes for self-belays, since the traverse was steep. The wind was really blowing! Several times we had to hunker down, cover up, and wait for it to stop. It felt like it was trying to blow us off the mountain! Finally, we reached the high point, took a quick picture, then started our long traverse back to the main route. By now the snow was softening up, and anyone without snowshoes would posthole up to their waists. We glissaded where we could on the way down, and finally made it back to the trailhead at 6 p.m. for an eleven-hour day. A great winter climb, but the snow was hard and wind scoured so not that great for skis or snowboards.