Mt St Helens, Winter Route: 24 March 2019

Hey Folks

So for me this started a long time ago in a village far far away…Desainagar, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.

When growing up my dad got a view master, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View-Master this had amazing pictures of Mt Saint Helens. I looked at these with awe, and the majesty of this volcano just called me.

Fast forward my life, I found myself in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by volcanoes and peaks. A childhood dream!

One of my goals for this year was to climb Mt St Helens, the Winter route, Worms flows.

Our little group talked about this for a while, and a weather window showed up on Mar 23, 2019.

My friend Isaac, booked Lone Fir, and we had dinner at the place talking gear and excitedly looking forward to this hike.

I carried spikes, crampons, ice axe and a helmet along with all my other essential gear. The reports of soft snow, hard ice, made me prepare for anything. I spend a good amount time studying the topo and “memorizing the route”

We started at around 5am, walking in the dark, on snow right from the Snow park lot, which was packed!

The first 1.7 miles are easy and annoying, as you gain only ~400 feet, the rest of the elevation is straight after!

As day broke, we met my mountaineer friends, I keep hearing my name being called by a familiar voice, this comforting and funny!

We chatted for a bit and continued on our way.

The views are breathtaking!

The ice became harder and I was glad to have on spikes, my friend was on skis skinning up.

The hike is hard ! 

We stopped for a few breaks, at around 6000 feet I felt my cold kick in and was fatigued, I had a slight cold a few nights ago, and felt fine during the morning, but now I was not so happy, a slip on Mt Si, few weeks back was also showing up on my left leg. I am someone who always says “if its dangerous, turn back!”

I evaluated the situation, and knew I had “tons” left in the tank, I just needed to access it. I slowed my pace to < 0.6mph for about 500 feet, then my body kicked into lets do this mode!

We passed quite a number of people on the way up, and eventually reached the edge of the crater.

A good number of people were up top, the view was masked with clouds but we could see the amazing side peaks.

After having pizza for lunch, we took a walk towards the left, got some amazing shots. The weather started to clear up, and we saw into the crater, the “smoking” volcano!

Oh I was in heaven!!

After mucking around for almost 1.5 hours, we started our way down. My friend was on skiis, me with crampons, ice axe and helmet.

It was tough going down, very steep angles, hard ice, and every step was ice axe, side step, repeat..lol

Eventually, Isaac radioed me and said he was skiing down towards me, I got a few shots of him, before he disappeared.

I continued slowly, chatting to the crazy amount of folks coming up.

Then, the weather turned, a whiteout. I have a Garmin tracking watch with 100K topo, using this, I knew my way, I also had Green Trails and a compass, and an Oregon 600 as well ( for backup )

The snow started to soften, and I started a long glissade, oh this was wonderful, picking up to over 20mph, I was flying! I did not look at the watch all the time, the visibility was very poor, and I glissaded into a canyon!

Quickly realizing the danger,  I went into self arrest,  climbed out using my ice axe, and navigating back on track, I found other people who wondered where I “came from” lol

I saw skier nearly go into this as well, at the last minute someone screamed "go right", and he stopped right in front of me, looking down, and his face turned white!

I continued down, putting on snow-shoes, Isaac and I radioed and he was already at the car having a cup of tea.

I continued for the last 1.7 miles, which was really annoying now, but eventually returning the car, congrats to each other, we started back to Seattle.

What an adventure!