Non-RTS Climb - Mt. St. Helens July 6th, 2010

It was just INSANELY FUN! We were all worried about the hot weather that was heading our way as we headed out to Mt. St. Helens just after the Independence Day.

July 5th / Climbers Bivouac

Several of us met up at Oak Tree Restaurant just off of I-5 at the Woodland exit to have a dinner before we headed off down the highway to Cougar, WA where we were required to obtain the permits for our climbs and to register for our climbs. The members in this climbing party were: Geoff - one of the 2010 Reach The Summit Mt. Adams climber, John - Geoff's friend he grew up with, Leisa - a Reach The Summit assistant, Daniel - another Reach The Summit assistant, and myself.

Even though it was after the three day weekend over the Independence Day, I was rather surprised by how quickly the permits sold out as our climb date approached. There were over fifty permits available at the time when I bought mine and remained that way for the longest time. On Mt. St. Helens, they sell only 100 climbing permits a day to mitigate the impact on the mountain. It was only when Leisa emailed me to let me know that the number dwindled down to just ten permits as she got hers. There were few other Reach The Summit climbers who wanted to join us but, unfortunately, the permits were sold out by the time they tried to buy theirs.

After eating our last real meal, we headed east on highway 503 to Lone Fir Motel (Resort?) in Cougar, WA where we picked up our climbing permits and registered for the climb.  All climbers were required to have their permits tied to either on their jackets or their backpacks.  The parking permits also came with the climbing permits.

We're now finally ready to start our adventure. By the time we arrived at Climber's Bivouac which was sort of like a small roundabout at the end of the access road, the daylight was already starting to fade away and we quickly set up our tents. We were rather pleasantly surprised when we discovered Climber's Bivouac to be a well equipped and maintained campground, complete with a clean outhouse and BBQ/fire pits. There were lots of climbers camping there and we were lucky to be able to find few spots for ourselves arriving so late in the evening.

John was tasked to start a fire in the pit but any wood we found was too wet so Geoff, Leisa and Daniel decided to drive back to Cougar to pick up some firewood along with few other things.  In the mean time, John continued his effort with no success.  So I sort of casually suggested he might want to try using the camping stove fuel as a starter.  We almost blew up the campground to oblivion when the an Innocent looking match flame ignited the generous amount of camping fuel John poured all over the fire pit.  And the stubbornly lifeless pile of wood was instantly engulfed in flame.

Since we were car camping, we had brought with us all sorts of luxury items.  A big cooler full of beer and food, camping chairs, a big Coleman stove, etc., etc.  Of course, no camp fire experience would be complete without smores.  Under the dizzying cover of stars, we sat around the fire until almost midnight yakking about  important things.

July 6th / Mt. St. Helens climb

I woke up around 4am even before my alarm clock went off.  The sky was already starting to get bright.  It was pretty chilly outside but warm and toasty inside my tent.  I quickly changed into my cloths for the climb, started sorting my gear and packed all I needed for the day.  As I poked my head outside my tent, Geoff and John were awake as well.  I fired up my Coleman stove and started boiling some water for our morning coffee.  I also started mixing the pancake mix I brought with me for breakfast.  I realized that I totally forgot to bring cooking oil but Geoff had brought some bacon slices so we decided to fry them up first and make the pancakes in the freshly rendered bacon grease.  And it was unbelievably good!!!  Highly recommended!!!!!!!  Once again, it just went to prove that bacon was the solution to everything.  In fact, it was truly up there with duct tape.  We devoured them like bears coming out of their hibernation.  Our goal was to start the approach by 6am. 

Climber's Bevouac was located at 3,765'.  We put everything but our tents back into the car and started hiking in around 6:40am.  A little late but still not too bad.  Our gentle approach on Ptarmigan Trail took us through a beautiful wooded area.  Occasionally, we were afforded with gorgeous view to the south with Mt. Hood prominently standing in the distance.  We popped out above the timberline around 8am.   I have to admit this was the most thoughtfully equipped climbing trail - interestingly, there was an outhouse there with a sign declaring "Toilet".  From there, our plan was to go straight up the south side of the mountain.

Now that we were on the snow field, we started the long series of kick stepping up the slope.  I was very glad to see unseasonably plentiful snow as it surely would beat fighting dusty and loose volcanic scree for the next several thousand feet.  We reached the first plateau around 8:45am.  To the east, Mt. Adams was clearly visible.

In another 20 minutes or so, we reached a moraine where we took one of the short breaks.  By then, the sun was getting super intense.  We were slogging up a giant sun tan reflector effectively, particularly on a day like this when the air was so clear that it was not providing much of natural filtration.  On top of my SPF 100 sunscreen, I kept applying zinc oxide cream on my nose, underneath my nose, in my nostrils, on my upper lip and anywhere else that could potentially get fried.  We reached roughly 6,100' around 9:35am.

Around 6,900, there was a small weather station standing in the middle of a moraine.  There was even a US Geological Survey's marker but, interestingly, the elevation had not been inscribed on it for some reason.  The wind was starting to pick up seriously so it was time for us to put on our shells.  It was 10:35am. 

Even though we had only another 1,400' to go at this point, it seemed like it was just taking forever.  And it was.  We were still kick stepping straight up and it was proving to be a very time consuming process.

We found a small crevasse that we could take a peek inside right next to another moraine.  There was a hole that seemed to lead to who knew where. 

So we came across a skier who appeared to be in his late 60s or even early 70s just as we were almost reaching the rim of Mt. St. Helens.  We had seen him earlier near the timberline as well and were impressed by his fitness.  Well, it turned out that he had actually been up here already and skied down once since then.  This was his second run!!  How demoralizing was that?! Anyway, at 12:30pm, after six hours of slogging up the big pile of snow covered dirt, we finally reach the south rim. 

The rim was still badly corniced and, especially given this day's warm temperature, it was not safe for anybody to get closer than 20' away from it.  In fact there was a line of red wands to keep the people from getting any closer even though some were obviously not getting the hint.  I was able to take photos only by holding my camera as high as possible above my head. 

It was absolutely incredible to see the destruction that the eruption in 1980 caused. The north side of the mountain had been completely blown off and there was nothing but a ginormous void where the other half of Mt. St. Helens used to be.

We could also see Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams clearly in the distance. 

As I mentioned earlier, the condition on the rim was not stable for us to traverse to the true summit which was a couple of hundred more feet higher than where we were.  Therefore we decided to call it our summit and to break out our lunch.  The elevation was roughly 8,100' at this point.  But wait, that's not all, folks.  Daniel topped it off by pulling a bottle of bubbly and orange juice out of his backpack to celebrate our summit with mimosa!!  You rock, Daniel!!

Now that we had been well refueled, the best part of the climb was yet to come.  It's glissading time!!  (Simply put, it's sledding on our butts.)  Daniel pulled out his secret(?) weapon - trash bags.  The idea was to cut a hole at each bottom corner and to wear it like a giant diaper.  This reduced the friction and made it significantly more efficient to slide down the snow slope.  It probably would help keep our expensive Gore-Tex pants from wearing out on the bottoms as well

And here we went!!  We were able to descend pretty much most of our way down like this.

Just before we got back down to the timberline only after two hours since we left the rim, there was an insanely steep glissade chute at the end.  It was more than 6' deep and it felt like we were going straight down in it.  Looking back at it from the bottom, we were glad we didn't know what it looked like before we started down on it.  By 4:50pm we were back down at our camp site at Climber's Bivouac.

As usual, we were hungry like a bunch of unfed wild animals by the time we were ready to leave the camp.  The burgers had never tasted so good back at Lone Fir Motel in Cougar.