Climb Report: Mt St Helens

Who in their right mind would possibly want to drive to a mountain in the middle of nowhere, far too early in the morning, expend tons of effort to climb the thing, possibly not even to reach the summit, then climb back down. Wouldn't the effort be far better spent on something like solving world hunger? or walking to the store? I would think so. Given this pretty obvious situation, I drove to Mt. St. Helens at 3 am last week, miserably trudged to the top, took a bunch of pictures, trudged back down, and failed to do the necessary shopping.

We started at 3 AM so the snow would be good for a bid to the summit, so we wouldn't need to climb in the heat of the day, and to maximize our chances of being attacked by an axe murderer hiding in the woods.
When we got there, we were greeted by a police officer waiting for a search and rescue team. Someone got separated from their group the previous night on the descent. I immediately offered to keep an eye out for the person, along with any possible axe murderer.

Eventually the sun came out and the woods transformed into a peaceful paradise with no more axe murderers lurking at each bend (or pickup drivers waiting for me to get on a bicycle). The birds were chirping, the snow glistened, and the birds made noises that sounded obnoxiously close to whistles. Given that someone was lost out there and may use a whistle to call for help, this distressed us a bit. The lesson from that is: if I'm ever on a rescue team looking for you, make an extra effort to have your whistle not sound like a bird. And maybe shoo all the birds that sound like whistles away. If you don't have a whistle, maybe you could catch a bird and train it to sound a little less like a bird.


If you're considering climbing the mountain last week, you probably are interested in what the snow conditions were. I can assure you that there was snow. There was a lot of it. It was white, and it was kind of cold. There were also bugs in the snow. After touring the Oregon Zoo, I can assure you that they actually do naturally live there.

Crampons paid off for a brief, icy section of the climb around the tree-line. In the morning the snow was hard, brittle, and made great steps -- as planned, but as we ascended there were obvious signs of slides down the ravines on both sides, and the snow was breaking off in chunks a bit too easily for my comfort. There was also some crazy guy with an axe-like thing.

Given the grade near the summit, my concern about the snow, and my strong preference to not die, I second guessed my bid for the summit, but along came a stranger that assured me he had climbed the mountain dozens of times and never heard of an avalanche death. With this blind encouragement I set-off for the top. As the day heated up the snow became stickier and actually slid less (but was nowhere near conducive for good steps). There was also no apparent sign of layering within the snow.

Now some people might say how being on the top of a mountain is a spiritual experience. They may talk about how it gives you a new perspective of the landscape you live in. How you can leave your narrow world-view for a brief instant and see where you fit in from a broader perspective. You can see how the geology and ecology we often ignore has played such a key role in where our cities developed, where we work, where we sleep, how we move and play. I, on the other hand, would like to say how I stood at the summit and looked manly and tough, but that is not true. I took some pictures.

On the way down we encountered hordes of people hiking up in tennis shoes with no gear, not even hiking poles. It makes me wonder what these people would do if anything went wrong (not to mention how they can possibly ascend and descend like that), but I've already seen the answer to that. They pull out their cell phone, call 911, and expect to be teleported off the mountain in 10 minutes. That's not how it works. It may take over 8 hours before anyone even reaches them, let alone gets them off the mountain.

All in all, it was worth it. Special thanks to my climbing partner, who somehow resisted the urge to shove me off the mountain, and made the trip that much more enjoyable and possible.