10 miles of hiking • 5000' elevation gain • 1 night
Spent the night near the parking lot in wait for an early morning assault on Mt. Saint Helens. Unfortunately, the summit was not in the cards for the climb, with a thick layer of rime ice making the climb extremely treacherous. We turned back a half mile and 1000 vertical feet from the summit.
I'm going to wait until some real snow gets laid down before attempting this again.
Comments
Bosterson
January 8, 2012
Not to nitpick, but why doesn't your elevation figure agree with Jon's, and how did you manage to gain 5000 ft if you turned around 1000 ft below the summit and the whole climb is 4500 ft gain from the parking lot? I call shenanigans on your GPS.
jon
January 9, 2012
Bosterson, I'm sure Kyle would comment, but I think he's off in the woods for a few more days, so I'll reply.
The discrepancy in EG is because I turned around sooner than Kyle, as one of our group members started seriously struggling. So while I descended to check on him, Kyle and our other friend climbed further to see if the ice was going to get worse. In the end, we all turned around.
I'm guessing the 5000' is close to accurate as the Worm Flows (winter) route starts at Marble Mountain Sno Park (~2600' elevation). I think the parking lot that you're referring to is the Climbers Bivy (~3700' elevation), which you can't drive to this time of year. When we summited via the Worm Flows last June, the total EG came out a little over 5600' for the trip.
Bosterson
January 9, 2012
Ha, that makes sense. What was the deal with the ice - too little even for crampons to stick to the ground, and no other way to go up without snow for snowshoes?
jon
January 10, 2012
The snow really started to thin out up there, so snowshoes weren't really a good idea above 6000'. I was fine when I switched out to crampons, but others who brought microspikes had a tougher time.
Kyle Meyer
January 10, 2012
Added a video of the few clips I took on the way up you might like to see Bosterson.
Eric Peterson
January 8, 2012
Do you get a 2 day sno park permit for this or just have a annual? Kind of want to attack Helens as well sometime this winter or at least before the permit quota thing starts again...