May 12, 2007, Mt. St. Helens

Word had it that the road to Climbers Bivouac is blocked by snow 3 miles short of the trailhead, although the road is not gated.  So we left the Marble Mountain Sno-Park at 8 am and followed the trail for 1.25 or so miles before we hit continuous snow.  The snow down low was fairly mushy and unconsolidated and progressively hardened to icy snow at the summit.  Thankfully there was minimal wind and plenty of sun.  The 20 minutes we spent at the summit were enough for the sun to turn what sounded like scratchy ice on ascent to beautiful corn for descent.  The top 1000 feet were great, the 1000 below that were decent.  Good views between the cloud decks to Hood, Adams and Rainier.  The lady at Jack's Restaurant told us that 280 people were registered to climb on saturday and I believe it.  One guy of the 280 with a kids plastic sled told me that his GPS had recorded a top speed of 28.3 mph on his descent.  Wow!  It would have been interesting to see how the people with saucers fared on their descent.  On a more serious note, I noticed an extensive crown on my descent that was skiers right of the main ascent route and just below the crater rim.  Things seemed stable to me, so I was surprised to see what appeared to be a good size slab avalanche.