April 9-10, 2004, Mt St. Helens

With the forecast for a clear weekend, we quickly gathered our things together and decided to head to Mt. St. Helen's.  Ron and I left late Friday afternoon and Jerry and Darryl joined us later that evening.  Ron and I stopped at Jack's Bar and Grill Country Store for the climbing "permit" and then headed to Marble Mount Sno Park.  With the snow mobile season winding to an end, you do NOT need a sno park permit for the remainder of the season at Marble Mount parking.  We were able to park in the upper portion of the lot with only a couple of other cars occupying spots.  The road to the climbers boviouc is still blocked by snow.  We started from the sno park at 4:00 a.m. Saturday only having to carry our skis about 50 yards into the forest before being able to start skinning.  It was a fairly mild Saturday morning at 4:00 a.m. and chinook winds were blowing through the trees, starting at 3500 and those continued off and on throughout the day, gusting to some much stronger winds.  As day break came, the views were fantastic.   The snow was good and we were able to skin from the parking lot all the way to the summit, arriving at 11:00 a.m.  We had experienced the strongest winds around the 6000 foot section, and were using ski crampons since the snow was firmer the higher we got.  The views from the crater rim were spectacular as we saw the Dome, Spirit Lake, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams, Mt Hood, and (I believe ) Mt Jefferson.  We took advantage of several photo opportunities during our lunch break, hoping that the snow would soften.  The snow from the rim, down approx 500 feet, was hard and nasty.  >:( We traversed down from the summit and skied, skiers right of the main trail, finding some steep, sweet, almost untracked lines.  We continued down skiers right of the weather station in some of the best spring snow  ;D  ;D At 5600  the snow started to soften and the lower we skied the softer it got, making turning more challenging.  Once on the main trail, thanks to some snowboarders grooming the trail ahead of us, it was fast, fun, and exciting.  With the warm weather, the trail is melting out quickly.  In the next week there will probably be some short shoulders carries off and on.  Watch out for that quarry as it is melting out quickly too.  We arrived back at the car by 2:30p.m., enjoying our beverage of choice while sitting around chatting amongst ourselves and other skiers about the great climb/ski of St. Helen's.   8) Ron and Jerry will have some photo's available shortly.