June, 7-8, 2012, Mt. St. Helens

I enjoyed escorting a few young and elder men up Mt. St. Helens on Friday, June 8th.  It was a classic NW mountain experience starting with rain.  We started at the Snow Park, walked through mud and puddles and patchy snow.  We had snow falling on us by 3,000 feet.  I had my skis and started skinning at about 3500 feet but had to remove my skis at the start of the worm flows.  I started skinning again at 4800 feet.  We had snow all the way up and total white out at 7500 feet.  So we called it good and began a careful descent--skiing, boarding, and glissading-- for about 2000 feet in whiteout, but very smooth powder.  Then it started to clear for us and we had another 2000 or so of super fun creamy powder.  So... the 90% chance of showers turned into snow at 3000 feet and we had about 6 inches of new near the summit instead of the expected 1-3 inches.  We triggered wet slabs starting on our very last pitch at about 4000 ft where the temps had warmed up.  Slow and small--about 3 inches deep.

These boys thought it was the best day of their lives--and they learned a lot about how mountains behave!  It was great to see their grins, but very tired and wet bodies after a great day.

pictures and video here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/danpeck/sets/72157630033748841/with/7358063880/