Mt. St. Helens from the parking lot.
Lots of driving: I got up about 3:15, got to Tom’s house (they have a great view east) around 4:00, and we got to Jack’s Store near Cougar around 7:15, got to the trailhead 8:00 and started hiking around 8:15.
The first hour or so was through forest, with less vegetation than you’d see north of here. You cross the trail that circumnavigates the mountain, but it’s not tough to keep on the right trail, the Ptarmigan Trail. The trail goes through an area of rather small trees, and then onto the lava rocks of the mountain. The slope never gets too steep, and we were in the shade behind the ridge for much of this stage. The trail goes over increasingly rocky terrain; following these large posts stuck into the ground, or into the rocks with re-bar. The gully to the right of the one the trail goes up has what looks like a glacier in it, crevasses and all. This is the remains of the dying Shoestring Glacier, which before the eruption was unique in its long, narrow shape.
Eventually the trail leaves the rocks and gully, and goes the rest of the way, an hour or so, up the open side of the mountain. It was quite windy; I had to put on my headband and blue polypro shirt and windbreaker for this part, and had my hands in my pockets much of the time.
I summited about 11:10. I saw a couple of guys standing up there, and didn’t think it could be the summit already, but it was. Kind of an anticlimax. I took some pictures, and sat down for some lunch. It was much less windy on the summit than fifty yards below, but I got cold and had to put on more, including my heavy green polypro shirt that I’ve often brought but never worn in the mountains before, and eventually, some time later, I put on my rain pants. Fred, Tom and Mark arrived a bit later, and Jason and Wendy some time after that. When we were all there but Jason and Wendy, we went over to the high point on the rim, and took some photos. It looked to me a little like a small version of Crater Lake, down to the lava dome as a variation on Wizard Island (but without the crater on top.) The thing is, the whole rim is just a mass of sand, no real structure to it. And it looks like a cutaway of a volcano on the inside, the layers of different colors. Kind of neat. I hope I got a good photo of it.
On the way up, we met Mike, an Austrian who’s been working in the US as a tour guide for the last couple of years, doing tours of Germans and Austrians coming to the US. Man, did he talk! He talked just about nonstop just about the whole time we climbed up with him and back down. He was wearing the most garish spandex tights I've ever seen. He'd stopped at the Powerbar factory in Idaho, and had gotten a big haul of Powerbars there, and was giving them away.
While we were up there, we got our permits checked by a ranger. We chatted with him; he said that when the top of the mountain was blown off, the accumulation zones of the glaciers were taken away, so there are "decapitated" glaciers left behind, ablation zones slowly melting.
The view wasn’t that bad, though the climb itself wasn’t all that tough. On the way down, it was pretty cloudy and foggy, which made it more interesting.
On the drive home, we stopped at the McMinnaman’s place in Centralia. I called it the Chrystal Ballroom, it’s actually called the Capitol something. I was pretty impressed that I was able to find it, having been there once a year ago. And, even more impressive, all three cars rendevsou'd there successfully.
Didn’t get home until around 10:00.