June 18, 2010, Mt St Helens, Monitor Ridge

Looking for a good one-day trip, we were able to land some permits for Mt. St. Helens for today.  Compadres Michelle and Anna had never been up to the rim and I'd never skied it in the Spring, so we were stoked.  The weather forecast looked promising a week ago, but deteriorated as the day approached, seemingly par for the course this Spring.  We picked up our permits this morning in Cougar at the Lone Fir Resort, which opens at 6am - this might preclude those wanting an alpine start, but was plenty early enough for us. 

As noted in a report a few days ago, the road is now open all the way to the Climber Bivouac.  There are several dry patches on the trail up through the trees, but if you take a deviation left from the trail where it opens up around 1.5 miles in (below the start of the ridge), and follow the broad gully below the ridge, there is continuous snow all the way to the summit. Following the  trail hiker's right back into the trees wraps around the small hill on a dry and unappealing slog up to timberline.

Snow conditions were fine for the hike up, but we were able to push our poles several inches into the pack in many places - below that there seems to be a very supportive crust.  It seems that the midweek storm that rolled through must have dropped a few inches up there.  As we got closer to the rim, we were enveloped in steady winds and thick clouds and by the time we got up there, visibility was down to about 40 feet.  We slowed our pace near the top as we didn't want to stumble blindly out onto the cornice, and stopped well short of the rim when we saw a crack that appeared pretty far in (~10 feet). 

The ski down had its moments but the new snow was pretty grabby below 7,000 feet. 
We stuck to conservative lines due to some minor sluffing, but didn't really see any evidence of slides on the steeper stuff.  It seemed that around two dozen people summitted, but we didn't see any other skiers or boarders.  The snowpack looks deep for this time of year above treeline, so should be good for a while.  Not the best conditions today, but we were all loving it, and it once again proved the maxim that any day on skis is always better than a day spent in the office.