Home > Trip Reports > May 3, 2017, Mt St Helens

May 3, 2017, Mt St Helens

5/3/17
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
3838
5
Posted by undermyownpower on 5/4/17 4:00pm
Started in the rain and ended in the sun. We started at 6a and we were down by 1. The snow was supportable and the skinning enjoyable.  Skiing the western aspects as much as possible kept the skis gliding. Direct south slopes were stable but very slushy. We need a good corn cycle, but the coverage is great. We were able to skin from the car and glide back to the trail head. 
Sweet! We are heading up monday, for what looks like will be post a nice corn cycle.

Thanks for the beta.  Headed up tomorrow morning and hoping for a decent ski.

I climbed MSH on Sunday, May 7.  It's been a few years since my last visit.  I noticed two remarkable things: First, the FS seems to have abandoned permit enforcement.  I estimate about 300 folks could have visited the top that day.  Second, there were fewer skiers (and other riders) than I remember in past years.  It used to be primarily hike up, ride down.  Not so on May 7.  I estimate about 5% of visitors rode down.

Now the juicy stuff: The corn was exceptional, top to bottom.  A cold wind kept the snow sufficiently chilled even near the bottom.  And it seems the weather rule on these perfect May days is no wind at the top regardless of what happens below.  Does anyone know why that happens?

author=johnspeth link=topic=38426.msg155669#msg155669 date=1494251098]
I climbed MSH on Sunday, May 7.  It's been a few years since my last visit.  I noticed two remarkable things: First, the FS seems to have abandoned permit enforcement.  I estimate about 300 folks could have visited the top that day.  Second, there were fewer skiers (and other riders) than I remember in past years.  It used to be primarily hike up, ride down.  Not so on May 7.  I estimate about 5% of visitors rode down.

Now the juicy stuff: The corn was exceptional, top to bottom.  A cold wind kept the snow sufficiently chilled even near the bottom.  And it seems the weather rule on these perfect May days is no wind at the top regardless of what happens below.  Does anyone know why that happens?


RE permit enforcement: 500 permits per day are available though May 15 so it is more than likely that most if not all of those people had permits.

RE wind: I experienced a similar phenomenon on Eldorado yesterday, decent wind the entire way up but once we reached the summit it had died down (or was not present).

thanks for report.

Necessary to mention that MSH permits are a sham. Private non-profits harvests $8 off the $22 permit. $5 to MSHI and $3 to their non-profit processing partner. You used to get something mailed to you for a $2 processing fee, now you just print it out yourself. With the ubiquitous of web hosting and payment processing it's hard to imagine how those costs increased while reducing postage and printing, a highly manual process.

And MSHI gets ~$60k a year from the public, for your right to access public land. Not to mention they're the gate-keepers of climbing other routes on the mountain such as the 'Crater View Climb' that goes up on the NE edge. The only legal way to do it is $300 to the MSHI. I attempted to comment on this travesty of a private org having exclusive access to public land, esp as the way the project was worded this could be in perpetuity (though it was mentioned under the guise of opening it up as a secondary climb route)... Anyways the FS played shennanigans and decided it wasn't even something available to have public comment on anyways and decided it administratively. F Them!

haven't bought a permit in years

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undermyownpower
2017-05-04 23:00:28