Mount St. Helens - Worm Flows Route — Thursday, May. 28, 2009

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

We picked a wonderful day to summit Mt. St. Helens. After a 5:00 am (late) start from Seattle, we picked up our permits in Cougar. No-one in our party of four had climbed the mountain before, and so, after reading many conflicting reports of conditions and preferred routes, decided, somewhat confidently, to embark on the Worm Flow route via the Marble Mt. Sno-park. We were on the trail at 9:10am. As we expected, the boot trail was easily followed, and we made quick progress to tree line (apprx. 1 hr, 100% boots on snow), and then another 2 hours of kick stepping up to a nice flat area (complete with solar toilet) for lunch. Even with soft snow, following previous boot tracks kept post-holing from occurring. After a 30 min lunch we embarked on a much slower 4 hours to the top, 7 hours total including frequent rest and 20 minutes soaking in the views at the summit. We eventually did put on our crampons for the steepest part of the ascent, and I found this to be helpful in my forward progress. The views in to the crater and of the surrounding mountains (Rainier, Adams, Hood, and the Sisters) were stunning. A jacket was needed at the summit, but with temps in the low 70’s, even halfway up the mountain, we were in t’ shirts for the majority of the hike. A perfect chain of glissades took us down to tree line in an hour and a half, and we were back to the car in 2.5 hours, for a total trip time of 9 and a half hours. We were 4 of about 16 climbers on the mountain, including 3 snowboarders with whom we shared the summit (together with the sound of two snowmobiles who were buzzing up and down the steep summit slopes). We made it back to Seattle at 11:00PM after dinner in Centralia. All in all it was a wonderful and exhausting day.