Climbing St. Helen's

[Kinggene]

So the mountain is different this year! She is naked! We camped at Marble Mt. Sno-Park. Left at 3:00 am and started on a snowless trail. We hiked all night till 6:30 when the light started to make shapes in the shadows. Past Chocolate Falls, dry as bone, weird, I thought. Then we started up the Worm flow on left side of Swift creek. The snow was scare and at 5000+ finally started to accumulate to about two inches. Then we hit the rocks!
This is where it got dicey. Still dark it was hard to go on icey rocks, plus wind picked up as it always does right before daylight. Got above the hard wind to a slower breeze but the snow was at 3-4 inches and covered the rocks just enough to make them all very dangerous. Finally daylight came and we could see our fate. The last half of Worm flow off to the left under the Monitor ridge was all bare, and icey rock!
We felt good! Really wanted to continue too. You all know how sometimes when you are tired the decision is an easy one, but when you are ready to go and can't it is a real bummer!
I posted a few pics I took right after dylight, so they are grainy from that.
Need more snow to climb Winter route!
Cheers till next time, Gene

[RobinB]

Nice pictures! And that's a scarily small amount of snow.

Being a generally lazy guy, I've never gotten an alpine start with St. Helens - I think we started around seven. I wonder if that would help with the ice?

[teperilloux]

Bummer conditions didn't cooperate... especially with the time and effort in an early start.
We plan to climb before permit season.
Is Marble Mountain route climbable without snow?
I suppose if it were summer temps it would be similar to late season monitor ridge, but I've only been on it with lots of snow.

[kepPNW]

Is Marble Mountain route climbable without snow?

We climbed it on 1/30/15, and there was no snow below 6000'. It's certainly doable. Following the worm is the worst. I surely wanted leather work gloves! (We did run into folks with bloody hands, higher up.) Otherwise, it's just slow-going loose stuff, until you hit Monitor Ridge around 7500'.

[Kinggene]

Is Marble Mountain route climbable without snow?

We climbed it on 1/30/15, and there was no snow below 6000'. It's certainly doable. Following the worm is the worst. I surely wanted leather work gloves! (We did run into folks with bloody hands, higher up.) Otherwise, it's just slow-going loose stuff, until you hit Monitor Ridge around 7500'.

[kepPNW]

Should've included this in the last post. As you get up above Chocolate Falls, look for a way over to the easternmost "Good Worm" flow. There's almost a trail along it. The standard route follows the "Bad Worm" flow...

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  Worm on left offers lots more "hands-on" climbing than worm on right!

We realized this as we climbed the standard route, and looked longingly over at the the alternative. On the way down, we confirmed our impression.

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  Going up.

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  Going down.

[jessbee]

Karl, thanks for the beta. I'll be taking a group up in a couple weeks. It will be my 6th or so winter trip up St Helens and I've seen nothing like this before!

[kepPNW]

Karl, thanks for the beta. I'll be taking a group up in a couple weeks. It will be my 6th or so winter trip up St Helens and I've seen nothing like this before!

Ever heard of standing on the summit in shorts and shirtsleeves in January? Nutz, I tell ya.

The actual "jumping off point" for the eastern worm is right at the rubble field by Chocolate Falls. Otherwise, you have to cross that little canyon at some point.

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Track and lots more photos available in my sig links. Happy to go into more detail as desired.

[MarsIsCobra]

Great TR. and Karl great details. helps plan my next ascent

[kepPNW]

Snow was getting really sloppy yesterday. (We were up above Butte Camp Dome.) Fwiw...