Mount St. Helens: Worm Flows (2019)
Trip Date: January 26, 2019
Distance: 10.37 miles
Elevation Gain: 5504 ft
Fees/Permits: Washington Sno-Park Permit (winter)
GPX: View my Gaia GPS track here
When Nate told me a month ago of the plan of skiing Mount St Helens, my first thought was “I guess I should do it and get it over with.” I had just climbed it in early December and twice earlier in 2018 alone, and, frankly, I felt burnt out on this particular mountain.
In the few days leading up to the climb, it felt like the universe was validating my reluctance to go. From trouble coordinating rides and deciding on which day to leave, to a stressful week, to a sketchy police investigation of a potential crime that led to a road closure the day we had planned on leaving…I had a lot of reasons to bail. However, it’s hard to turn down a beautiful ski descent and check one off the list of my 2019 goals (climbing, and skiing where I’m able, all of the Pacific Northwest volcanoes in the same calendar year), and on top of that I hate bailing on people. So I kept my mouth shut, packed up my things and hopped in the car on Friday night.
We waited with bated breath for any updates on the road closure as we drove down there, and while we heard nothing on the news updates, the road was open and cleared out by the time we arrived. We quickly threw out our bivies, and I promptly passed out from the state of exhaustion the week had left me in.
At 4:44am I heard voices in the parking lot chatting. Thinking it was Nate and Calvin, I quickly unzipped my bivy and sat up, just in time to hear Nate’s alarm go off. The voices I’d heard were Alex and Sonja’s, who had just arrived at the trailhead to meet us. As we exchanged greetings, I wondered how many people I’d met for the first time in that bleary “I-just-woke-up-and-now-we’re-being-introduced-in-the-dark” state.
After wolfing down some food and getting geared up, we hit the trails in the dark. From the very beginning I felt like I was on the struggle bus on the uphill. The last uphill thing I’d done was probably this very mountain a month and a half prior and adding to that the general mental aversion to this particular climb made my legs feel they were made of lead.
We booted the first half mile in before transitioning to skinning. We were only able to skin to about the Chocolate Falls area before being forced to strap on crampons and boot the rest of the way up to the summit due to the icy conditions.
Catching the sunrise over Mount Hood in the distance.
Blue hour on MSH.
It was a long slog up. I ran into Christina on the way up with her crew as well! It was heartwarming and inspiring to hear one of the gals say “there are more women up here than I thought there would be!”
Slogging up. Photo by Nate Brown.
At the summit with Christina Walker.
Aside from a few strong gusts of wind on the way up, it was a balmy, bluebird June-uary day. When we reached the summit, you could see all the way into Oregon and all the way up Washington, distinguishing all the major peaks in each state. We snacked up, hydrated, stripped off the skins, snapped a couple photos, and prepared for our descent.
The group (L to R): Calvin, Amber, Sonja, Nate, Alex
The summit area looked a bit icy for the first bit but thankfully some splitboarders had headed down just before us, shearing off much of the ice on the way down, providing some smooth turns for us. The ice quickly turned into beautiful spring corn halfway to the false summit and stayed consistently that way the entire way down. Nate and Sonja set up for some shots. I was too excited about the perfect skiing and zipped on ahead a little too far. Whoops.
Rime ice.
Photo by Nate Brown.
The ski down was one of the best lines I’ve ever skied and more than made up for the struggle up. It was just about 5000 ft vertical descent and was continuous until a half mile to the trailhead. On our way down, I also found out that it was both Sonja and Alex’s first volcano summit – whoo! It’s always a joy to be able to be part of someone’s first volcano experience, and such a good one at that!
(Random sidenote here: On our descent I noticed someone glissading down with crampons on (which is a no-no because you can seriously injure yourself that way). So I called him out on it. If anyone has thoughts on how to call someone out on something that can hurt them or if they’re violating LNT principles, I’d love to hear it!)
Will I climb this mountain again, eventually? Most likely, yes. But for now…onto other objectives for 2019!