Mt Saint Helens (8,320ft)
On the crater rim
January 11, 2015
Eric and Katie
Katie and I had just officially moved all our stuff into a new apartment in Seattle after I got back from post-graduation travels, and decided to take a break from moving to climb a mountain. The weather wasn’t great, but we decided to give Mt St Helens a try anyways.
On January 11 we drove down to the trailhead on the south side and slept in the car. In the morning at sunrise we started hiking up the trail along with a few other parties. It was drizzling, but the precipitation let up by the time we broke out above treeline. Unfortunately the visibility never really improved and we were in a semi-whiteout.
We kept hiking up, following a faint boot track, though it was difficult to discern when the terrain became icier. A snowboarder descended past us and it did not look fun on the rime ice.
Eventually we crested the ridge that we thought was the summit, though it was difficult to tell for sure in the whiteout and without a GPS. We were at least on a local maximum, from what we could tell. We soon descended, and after I took us on a wrong turn we made it back into the trees and followed a different trail back to the car by sunset.
© 2015 – 2018, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.
You must be logged in to post a comment.