Warning: The following is pretty wordy. In short, I had fun, the mountain was kind to me, and I chose not to make the main summit. There are a few photos linked into the text. Some are big, but they're totally worth the click. The big photos may not linger, but I'll replace them with more sensibly sized ones if they leave. A great many thanks go to Dave for letting me borrow his camera! THANK YOU DAVE! :)
When faced with a forecast of clear skies, warmer weather, and significantly lowered avalanche danger, I felt as though I had to try for something challenging for the weekend. I was scheduled to go on a Mountaineers field trip on Saturday, so two-day adventures were out. While working my way through possible choices in the North Cascades, all of which didn't quite resonate with me the way I wanted, some part of my brain jumped up and excitedly said, "Wait, what about St. Helens?!"
Up until now, I'd dismissed the thought of even thinking about winter ascents of the volcanoes. Carefully weighing what I could learn about the route and what I knew of my abilities, I came to the inescapable conclusion that such a dismissal was too flippant. The route had every indication of taking on most characteristics of a spring snow climb in late January. Furthermore, I was cautiously confident in my ability to know when I'm starting to push my luck with regard to the snow conditions.
An error on the part of the Mountaineers website, as near as anyone can tell meant that I didn't go on their field trip on Saturday (but I did get up at 5:30 in order to go...(about 5 hours of sleep)). Some minor replanning later found me rejoining Dave and Tracy on a trip to Bandera Mountain, I mean Talapus Lake. After an enjoyable hike, I headed south at about 8 pm, fortified by a pretty tasty barbecue brisket sandwich.
I motored through the three hours and a box of granola bars reasonably easily. A little route-finding stupidity (sensible people won't have any trouble getting there) later, I signed in at the climber's register at Jack's Restaurant and headed up to the Marble Mountain Sno-Park. On my way up, I caught my first close-up glimpse of St. Helens by moon and star light. It was big, white, and only dimly resolved by my headlight-attuned eyes. I found the sight a little intimidating (it's not small), but reminded myself that, for most mountains, there's little harm in trying to ascend them; they'll let you know rapidly if you're not meant to be there.
Pulling into the Sno-Park at about midnight, I found about ten cars in the icy lot. It looked like everyone was asleep, and I hastened to do the same. I set my alarm for two 'o clock... two twenty, set everything up I needed for the morning and fell asleep. A moderately stiff wind rocked the car a little as I did so, further worrying me about the coming morning.
Two twenty came pretty quickly. I became fully conscious at perhaps two thirty or so, and noted happily that I hadn't subconsciously turned off the cell phone alarm clock. I chugged more than a half a smaller bottle of coke, worked my way through a couple granola bars, and reorganized my pack before setting out for the wilds of the parking lot at about three am.
I then began the unhappy hunt that every late arrival to a trailhead finds upon attempting to make an early start: trying to find the trail. In my travels, I discovered that while I could find a number of well-signed trails, none of them were quite the ones I wanted. After scraping around the parking lot in snowshoes for a while, I chose the one that was apt to send me in basically the right direction and went for it. In large part due to the reflective signs installed by the National Monument/Sno-park folks, I worked my way to a trail that I was sure would work over about an hour of focused wandering.
I wound up heading to June Lake, which is a half mile or so East of the usual Worm Flows route up the mountain. As the many route descriptions I'd seen, which all seemed to jive with my map, suggested that there were no major routefinding worries, I chose to diverge from the beaten path of skiers and snowshoers when it stopped heading my way. I followed a few sets of older prints due North and out of the trees. I was a little unhappy about being perhaps an hour behind my own schedule, but there certainly wasn't much I could do about it except head up.
The older prints in the snow soon worked their way up a steep snowbank, which looked sensible to me from the terrain. After working my way up on the solid crust, I was moved to stow my snowshoes and fix my crampons. For the next hour, I cruised along on rounded snow toward the growing mountain. When I could, I switched off my headlamp to gape at the stars, but found that gaping and walking on uncertain terrain were somewhat incompatible, so I focused on walking. I was surprised to encounter a pair of recent snowmobile tracks somewhat above timberline. As their line represented a little more avalanche safety and tended to agree with where I wanted to go, I followed them, occasionally marvelling at the slopes they were willing to tackle. I've since learned that the snowmobiles have the run of the mountain until the closure of the Sno-parks in the spring. I'm glad I didn't encounter any at all on the mountain. I'd have been unspeakably sad, had I done so.
As the snowmobile tracks made their last high-mark, I was faced with a choice: head up the slightly rocky but aesthetic looking ridge to my right, or drop down a little and head for the more mellow-looking route to the left, in the general direction of the standard route. Accepting that the thinner ridge might mean encountering an impassible crux, I headed up its flanks through some bigger volcanic blocks. The choice definitely made my day.
After I worked my way up a satellite ridge to the main ridge, I encountered a pretty stiff wind. The wind lower on the mountain had been gusts to perhaps twenty miles per hour or so, but on the ridge crest, the wind easily made it to forty or so, in gusts. While it wasn't nearly stiff enough to knock me over, it was sufficient, particularly because of its variable nature, to occasionally throw me out of balance at inopportune times. The wind did have it practical aspects as well; Whenever I felt the need to wipe my runny nose, the wind easily whipped my nose clean before I could bring my hand up. It was pretty handy.
I raced the sun as high up the mountain as I could, as my goal above all others for the trip was to find myself as high as I could be on a sharp southeastern ridge above timberline at sunrise. I stopped a couple of times to take photos and munch some food both before and during sunrise. The alpenglow on the upper slopes was quite nice, but the view of Adams, Hood, Jefferson and Shasta was better. At this point, I slowed down quite a bit. I felt sated simply by making it to the sunrise on a prettier ridge than I'd expected. I told the mountain that I was really quite happy, and that all the rest was extra credit. With that, I continued up the ridge.
To my distinct surprise, I discovered that the wind was non-existent only a few feet below the ridgetop on the lee side, so I took advantage of the opportunity to avoid the gentle spindrift facial when I could. I was glad to see the ridge widen a little as I encountered the harder ice of the upper mountain. The cramponing was good all the way up the ridge; even the ice that looked like it might be boilerplate was willing to take enough of the points to be stable. Of interest to me were some nifty remelted rime ice structures that populated much of the route. I've seen plenty of rime, but never anything that'd melted and refrozen. When I took my last break on the ridge, I was amazed to see that I couldn't see any other people on the entire mountain.
The last five or six hundred feet to the crater rim were fairly icy, but it didn't seem unreasonably bad. I did find that by the top of the ridge, my calves hurt quite a bit from the preceding two or three hours of french technique that brought me to the top. I made the local summit at perhaps ten or so. I could see that, around the crater rim, none of the cornices looked super scary, but the entire rim was one big cornice. I decided that it was probably safe to ascend far enough on the cornice to see over the top. I did so and then quickly snapped a panorama before dropping back down somewhat. At this point, I wanted a break, but the slope offered no simple respite. The top of the cornice would have (it was nice and flat), but I wanted no part of an extended stay up there.
I began to traverse along the rim, below the cornice break-off height, to join the less-steep main route. I was surprised to discover that the southwest-facing slopes were both softening and had been wind-loaded with a relatively unconsolidated slab about eight inches deep. Taking as much care as I easily could, I worked my way across the steepest part of the slope (the nifty rime formations are visible here too). As I crossed, I noted the presence of several climbers more than a thousand feet below. I was unhappy to see that they were heading into my slab's slide path, so I hurried as best I could to reach more stable slopes.
The slope safely crossed, I found a lower angled slope on which to take a break and a few photos, and then headed up to one of the two higher points along the rim. Upon reaching the closer one, it was readily apparent that I was not on the higher one. I decided, however, not to traverse to the true summit simply because I wasn't feeling it. My lack of sleep was catching up with me, and I was unhappy about the prospect of encountering new wind-loaded slopes on the traverse below the break-point of the rest of the rim's cornice to the true summit. Scampering atop the cornice again for the last time on this trip, I took another hasty panorama as well as a few self-portraits (check out Mom's stylin' sunglasses!) and scooted back down to a spot where I felt more comfortable. I turned around at about eleven thirty (I'd been aiming for a nine am summit.).
I descended slowly, enjoying the day, the view, and the mountain. I was surprised to see a large bolus of people coming up the mountain. With lots of folks coming up, I was glad to be going down. As it turned out, I was the only source of rockfall I encountered all day, accidentally bopping loose a small grapefruit sized rock that was easily avoided by everyone it passed. On my way up, I'd kicked off a basketball-sized lava block that took a significantly more spectacular trajectory (My helmet appears in the photos thereafter.).
The skiers coming up were largely surprised to hear my tale of the windloaded slope above them, and I grew tired of telling it. All told, at most sixty people passed me on their way up. I was thankful to have had so much time on my own route after encountering everyone and seeing what an unpleasant route the standard route turned out to be. The route clearly made sense as a summer route, but it unecessarily exposed itself to danger, largely due to extended trips atop cornices. I took a couple pictures of the glide cracks I found just above the route everyone was heading up. I'm quite sure the whole route was safe, but there certainly were better, prettier, and safer routes to be had. I took another panorama beside a seismic monitoring station during a break.
I'd pretty much run out of internal poop by the time I made it back to the car. My legs and body were happy and ready for more, and I entertained the looney thought of calling home to see if anyone wanted to do Si or Tiger or something, just to get a little more up in, but the overall exhaustion due to lack of sleep discouraged any such lunacy. I planned to take a nap when I reached the car, but decided I wanted to sign out of the register before I did. On the way out, I got to reprise my previous moonlight views of the mountain with the sharper view in the afternoon sun (my line took the serpentine rocky ridge on the right). The drive to Jack's turned into a drive to I-5, where I bought some cheap(er) gas, had a burger (yeah!), and picked up a bag of Doritos from a grocery store for the trip home. I made it home at perhaps seven thirty, and to bed by nine thirty.
My total car-to-car time was about twelve hours. I think that might be trimmed to ten by advance knowledge of the route in the morning and by ascending the faster standard route.
In retrospect (a few days later), I've realized that part of the reason I opted not to head for the true summit also stemmed from the fact that the mountain felt as though all of the summits were basically equivalent as far as it was concerned. Reaching the rim felt like a very unnatural end to the climb; the forces of weather, snow, and cold haven't yet reshaped the rim into a true summit. If we're lucky, the mountain will rebuild itself before that happens. The dome inside *is* pretty large....
