(all pictures are low res, for high res click here)
Diane, Michelle and I had some intense cabin fever over the last month, and we decided it was time to go climbing. For a change of pace, we chose Mt. St. Helens. After a fun drive thru some very shitty traffic, and a stop at Jack's Resturant and Shop to pick up our climbing permit (we got there as they were closing, but they were kind enough to give us a permit anyway), we stopped at a great diner in Cougar, Washington. If you go to St. Helens, make sure you stop at the Cougar Bar & Grill -- this is a classic American diner. I absolutely loved their red velvet booths.
After a scrumptious dinner, we
headed to the Marble Mountain Sno Park, where we had planned to camp for the
night. Well, I won't mention any names (Diane and Michelle) were...ahem...cold,
so they insisted we sleep inside the
car instead. As snow started accumulating, we moved all of our gear to the
front seats
and crammed our three cold bodies into the back of the subaru. A couple of
restless hours later, we woke up, packed our gear
and headed up. As we began
climbing, it was clear that we would have to contend with falling snow the whole
way up the mountain.
Snow be damned, we climbed on!
At this point, we were breaking trail the entire way. Visibility got worse, and
so did the trudging thru the snow.
At 6,000 ft, we realized that
we were heading into a death trap. I called Michelle on the
radio and asked her to help me assess the avalanche conditions. Sure enough,
we both thought the conditions were right for a
slab avalanche. To test our claim, I built an
avalanche
test pit -- this proved valuable, as Michelle jumped on the top of the pit,
a huge slab of snow fell right off of it. OK, we are going down - FAST!
Before that, I tried to take one quick picture of Michelle and Diane, but I
couldn't see thru the viewfinder because of the snow.
The longer we stayed out there, the worse the conditions became.
Thank god I put
wands on our route as visibility was very limited. Once off the mountain, we
got to enjoy the winter wonderland of the trees and snow. Though we were
disappointed, the beauty of this trail was quite uplifting.
We are looking forward at a 2nd chance to climb St. Helens in the future.