I
cannot believe that I did it! Finally, on top of St Helens.There was
never a question of 'can do', but would all the stars line up with
permit, weather, time and would I be able to do it. And that happened
this Thursday as I had planned. Got the permit from someone, packed my
bags on Wednesday night, camped at Lone Fir Resort and finished the hike
on Thursday! awesome! My fascination with St Helens is because of its
volcanic status, its an active volcano with marks of eruption are so
visible around it. I have been wanting to climb it since I heard that
its possible to climb.
We
started from Seattle on Friday night to camp at Lone Fir Resort. The
plan was to get a good night sleep, get up early and start climbing
early and then drive back home after the climb. We reached the report at
around 8:00 after a 3 hr drive from Seattle. It was like a city there,
resort cabins, restaurant, proper restrooms with showers, and even a
entertainment room with TV and stuff. It was mainly a RV campsite. Among
all this there was some open ground to setup tent. There was only one
other tent in the area and my guess would be that they were also camping
for the night to climb Helens. We quickly setup the tent, went out to
watch some stars and then went to sleep.
Thursday
morning, we got up early according to the plan, quickly packed up and
had a breakfast of maggie. There is a climber's registration that you
have to sign in and out. I guess in case of emergency they want to keep
track of who is still on the mountain and stuff. We signed the register
and started for the trailhead around 7:00. It was a nice 30 min drive,
mostly paved road. Last 3 miles was gravel and I hated driving buckbeak
on it, but well, no choice. Luckily the road was not bad, no potholes,
he handled it pretty well and did not complain at all. The trailhead,
Climber's Bivouac has a pit toilet which was surprisingly clean and
non-smelly. There were couple of people camped there, but the place has
no water. In fact there is absolutely no water on the whole trail.
We
started our hike at around 8:00am. It was a very clear day, just some
hanging clouds in horizon. The trail starts in a jungle. Its a nice
green jungle from where its hard to imagine just few miles away a
mountain erupted with such force. The jungle trail is about 2 miles and I
was totally doubting myself if I am on the right trail! After about 45
min, we saw a wall of rocks. There was no sign of mountain from the
trail. Soon the trail climbs steeply with a couple of switchbacks, till
you emerge in an open area from where the rock scrambles start. There is
also a toilet here, and we saw a couple of other trails forking from
here - lowit or something.
We
could see Mt Hood from the trail once it opened up on one side, and Mt
Adams also appeared soon. Adams really looks like Rainier from here, but
it was clear that its not because little Rainier was missing. The rocky part is where permit area also starts. You can hike upto here
without a permit, but I don't see what is the point! There is no trail
in the rocky part. Its just a wall of rocks and you scramble your way
through. There were some wooden poles to guide you. Its not a difficult
scramble, just keep your eyes open for the next pole. It was a good idea
to keep eyes open and make sure that you don't get yourself stuck among
a great pile, as some parts are hard to navigate especially since lot
of rocks are loose. This is where we first experienced the high wind we
kept hearing about. Sometimes wind was so strong that it felt it will
throw you off the rocks!
The first rocky section is small and ends soon. Its well marked with
poles. After that there is a flatish portion, less rocks. The actial
trail takes you over the rocks, but we chose a way on the side, a bit
lower than the main trail. It is lot of scree, but I found that easier
to navigate than rocks. There was also much less wind here than on the
top. From here you reach another rocky debris which is harder to
navigate and there are less poles here. If you look carefully, you can
still find a sort of trail among the rocks. There are flatter scree
parts in between rocks, clear sign that the rocks have been deposited
here by some force. From here you also start seeing the final summit
which is like a beach in middle of mountains!! We could clearly see the
wind blowing up there and all the ash and sand flying around. After this final rocky section which I hated the most, we reached the
final scree slope. From here you can see the train of people going up
the summit, it looks so far far away! The scree is really hard to go up,
you take a step and slide back half the step. Poles were definitely
useful here, espeially for me since I was getting quite tired here.
Still we must be making good speed as we did not stop at all and
overtook a bunch of people on the way up.
Almost an hr of hard work on that scree slope and we finally reached the
summit of St Helens. I almost don't want to call it a summit as its so
short, still its the highest point you can go on the mountain. Then we
looked down at the crater and its huge! You see the 3 sides of mountain
and then a open area on one side. It almost appears that this is not one
mountain, but a range. In the middle is the lava dome. And then you
look up and there is Mt Rainier, just standing there beyond spirit lake.
It was definitely a sight to behold. We were lucky that among the high
windy times, there were short low wind times when we could take out our
camera and take some pictures. Most of the pictures are quite washed out
though because there was so much sand suspended on the air. The
activity on the dome has almost stopped, so we did not see much smoke or
anything.
We
were at summit at about 12:30, and spend about 30 min there, did not
feel like eating because of all the sand that was blowing. Then began
the long way down. I thought I am going to hate descending that scree,
but surprisingly not! I actually quite enjoyed it once I figured out
that once you step sideways, how much ever you try, you won't skid all
the way, the scree just makes a step for you. And of course there were
lot of already made steps by other people that I could walk on. So
getting down that was quite fun and fast, most of the time I was just
skidding around and letting graity do its job. We stopped just before
the rocky part to grab a quick lunch. This rocky part which I found hard
while coming up was easlier this time. We caught a trail that lead
through the flatter sandy sections among rock and came to the middle
part. This was again lot of scree and skidding as we were taking the
trail which is below the rocks. Even then it did take us quite a while
to navigate the whole thing. We were down at the edge of forest by 3:45.
The walk into forest was easy, took us less than an hour for the 2 mile
stretch. It was a nice change to walk on flat surface with shade of
trees.
More Photos - https://picasaweb.google.com/103561338002909087861/StHelens_08_27?authkey=Gv1sRgCKyqlrC0iq3huAE
We
were back on trailhead and ready to start driving by 5:00. A quick stop
at Lone Fir Resort to sign out at climber's register and freshen up,
and then straight drive home. On the way, as the tradition goes (or I
hope it becomes a tradition), we stopped at Denney's for a Oreo Sunday!
