Friday & Saturday, I made a semi-serious attempt at summiting Mt St Helens' second summit, on the east side of the Shoestring Glacier Canyon. (In the peak bagger's world, if 2 summits are separated by a minimum of a 300 ft saddle, each counts as a "summit") Last Saturday I had made a recon hike up from June Lake to the Pine Creek Canyon and thought that I had a pretty good understanding of what was ahead of me. Silly Me!
This is what I saw then, before I got chased out by a string of spectacular storm cells moving in from the east. I do have to admit that it was pretty fun sitting up there above timberline, watching those cells move down the Lewis River, complete with big lightening strikes & big rattily booms. I did keep looking back over my shoulder, expecting one to sneak up on me as I hustled trying to get back down into the timber.
My proposed route was to be mostly up the bare ridge on the far side of the Shoestring Glacier Canyon. It all looked very doable that day.
So, I got off work early Friday, and drove up to the June Lake Parking area. It did seem a little odd, that never having been there before, yet here I was again in a week....
Here is the obligatory shot of the waterfall over the lake.
I discovered an interesting detail about that creek. The Loowit Trail crosses the creek on a land bridge. The creek emerges from the Worm Flows rock pile about 100 yards above the trail.
Then it disappears back into the rock for at least another 100 yards below the trail. This is looking down towards the lake.
Then, it emerges again, only to fall into the lake!
Much of the trail is pretty rough as it traverses the 500 year old Worm Flow lavas. This stuff must have moved like day old cookie dough! The timber right at the edge of the flow doesn't even show any signs of fire.
Then, around 4:00 pm, this is what the mountain looked like, with sun getting low on the horizon.
Suddenly, all I could see was cliffs reflecting the sun! I have to admit that I uttered a few unkind words about my lack of perspective about the true nature of this ridge. How could I have been so naive? Now I was looking at 3,000 feet of steep snow. I had never done that before. It had been probably 35 years since I had any real ice ax practice, and I knew that my legs were in no condition to accomplish that. More unkind words, with even an obscenity or 2 thrown in for good measure. What was I to do? Carry on of course.
So, about 4 1/2 miles up, I set up my tent in the shelter of a small rock ridge and settled in for the evening and set my alarm for 3:30.
Along about midnight, the patter of light rain woke me up. Then several more times it woke me. My alarm went off as set. I opened the door and looked out. The fog was so thick, I could barely make out the rock 25 feet away. So the climb was officially scrubbed …. Thank You Lord!
I finally crawled out of the tent about 8:30, when the clouds finally lifted and it was starting to get light. I had decided to continue hiking the trail, perhaps as far as the Ape Canyon junction, just to see what was there. I knew that there were some canyons, and that's about all I knew. Immediately past my campsite, the huckleberry bushes started. The loud buzz of bees was just everywhere. A lot of the bushes already had fruit set on them. And there were humming birds everywhere too. I saw one flying with a small flock of sparrows. They landed in a tree and it landed too. Of course, being ADHD, it couldn't stand to sit still for very long before taking off. The standing snags in the picture had to have been killed by the 1980 eruption.
Then I came to the first canyon, Pine Creek. Moderately impressive!
Then I came to the Shoestring Canyon. My heart just about stopped ….. If it hadn't rained & fogged, I would have been facing this under head lamp. I honestly couldn't imagine even trying it, because it was so intimidating in full daylight!
If you can't pick out the trail, I am standing on it. Then draw a line down to the first snow patch. That's the trail. Then you climb over a small ridge, only to drop into the main canyon. Shoestring Falls are immediately down slope of the trail.
When I finally got down to the creek (more loose, steep, scary stuff), I was surprised to see a steel plate down in the water! It looked like at some time, it was the base for a bridge pier. If so, I would be surprised if it lasted through one spring melt.
Then it was the climb out of the canyon, on a similarly loose scree trail, just steeper yet.
Again, if you can't pick out the trail, start in the lower left corner, and draw a line to the boulder on the skyline.
Then it was up over another ridge, only to see another canyon. From the top of the ridge, this was the view back towards my intended route. Ugly! Again, Thank You Lord!
It was along in here, that I was surprised to hear foot steps behind me. It was a trail runner. He had started at the Climbers Bivouac, and was going to Windy Pass, then return. He said that he was training for the Volcanic 50 Run, which is early August. I looked it up, 50 km (32 mi) around the mountain, 7,400 feet of elevation gain. Last year the winner did it in 15:41!
So I finally called it quits at the top of the last ridge before the Muddy River. I had been on the last part of the trail to the Ape Canyon Trail a few weeks earlier, and just wasn't inspired to do it again.
This picture that I had taken earlier
shows my next attempt route well. I don't see any nasty cliffs on this view!
Final numbers for the trip: 13 3/4 miles, 3,140 feet.
