Mount St. Helens - Monitor Ridge — Saturday, May. 12, 2001

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

A group of friends and I decided to climb Mt. St. Helens this past weekend (5/12/2001) since this was the last weekend to do so before reservations were required. We arrived in Cougar, WA Friday evening (and stayed up too late drinking) then got up at 5:15, got our permits at Jack's Resturant, ate breakfast and drove as far as we could before snow closed the road, elevation 2900’. It was here I noticed that I had forgotten my gaiters, but luckily someone else had a crappy old pair that I used. We decided to give the Monitor Ridge route a try, even though it meant walking 3 miles on the road to Climber’s Bivouac. We hit the road/trail at 7:45 AM and got to the real trailhead after about an hour, elevation 3900’. The next two miles were also on snow but we were in the trees and the shade they provided felt good. We then started the serious climb when we broke out above treeline at about 9:30. The tread was good for the most part but it was sunny and warm, so occasionally the steps kicked in would give out-it's like getting slugged in the stomach. We began seeing people who had summitted earlier skiing and snowboarding down. At lunch break the wind really picked up making it very cold and hard to even stand up. It was very difficult beyond this point, wondering if we would ever reach the summit. We just kept plodding away. We finally reached the summit (8365’) at 1:35 PM, enjoyed the vista and tried to stay out of the wind. We saw a *lot* of others there, the vast majority had climbed using the Worm Flows route. We took some pictures, ate, and left after about an hour at the summit. The trip down was a lot more fun as we were able to glissade. We made it back to the cars at about 5:00, tired as hell (17 miles, 5500’ elevation gained round trip) but glad we did it.