There's been quite a few reports on "Old Smokey" already, so I'll try to make this short. Back in May I was invited to make this climb with a group of other geocachers, so I've been looking forward to it all summer. Our goal, aside from reaching the rim, was to find a geocache on Monitor Ridge that's been up there (in one incarnation or another) for over five years. It's at nearly 7000 feet toward the upper end of the boulder field making it one of the more difficult caches to get to in the Northwest. That along with the fact it's on an active volcano has made it a fairly popular cache, drawing nearly as many folks from the Seattle area as it does from Portland. Pretty amazing considering it's just a match container. Well, OK, two match containers. The page for that geocache, if you're interested, is here.
Our fine and eager group of folks left the bivy area about 7:20 am on a picture perfect September morning. The early going on the pleasant Ptarmigan trail went by pretty quick and before too long it was out of the woods and on to the infamous boulders...
By this time the group was getting spread out into smaller groups...
Mt. Adams had some very strange "smoke rings" in the morning sun...
Not long after finding the cache and signing its log we came out of the boulders and onto the scree...
Other climbers making the final push...
Yea baby...
The decaying tooth. Wow, is that ever cool...er, well maybe it isn't so cool...
Climbers on the rim...
Part of our handsome group at the rim...
That was just an awesome feeling to finally make it up there!
On the way down most folks flew through the scree on giant strides, but my legs were too rubbery to keep up. I knew this adventure would likely kick my butt though so I had come up in my own car. I wanted to be able to take my time if I needed to and I sure did. Some people find the scree to be the hardest part of this hike but I really didn't mind that part at all. For me it was the boulder field which was much larger and harder than I expected, especially coming down on tired legs and cranky knees.
Originally I had planned on bringing four litres of water, but when I heard the forecast was for a fairly cool day I foolishly scrimped and only packed three and a half. That was a mistake as I found myself thirsty and nursing my last eight ounces when I was only half way down the mountain and the day was no longer cool. Luckily though I found a snowy pool of water not far off the trail where I snagged a quick litre and slammed 2 ml of KlearWater into it. Fifteen minutes later I had some icy cold refreshment beyond belief. That's a great product, I'll definitely be carrying a little vial of that instead of my much heavier filter from now on.
I sure didn't set any land speed records on this effort but I did make it down in one piece, which was my only goal for this year. Next year I'm going to kick the mountain's butt! A big shout out has to go to all the really great folks who were in our climbing party this day, and I have to send a huge thanks out to Andrew who organized this fine expedition. A most excellent time was had by all. Thanks again for inviting me!
Gordon | 
