Honor thy Mother. Climbers on Mt. Saint Helens take this to heart every May by sporting fittingly matronly attire for the hike up. We set out on snowshoes early afternoon the day before Mother’s Day and camped just at the base of the mountain. The weather did not at all look promising – rain, snow, wind and completely cloudy skies.
I was trying out a Megamid – a type of tent (tepee really) that’s just a conical tarp without a floor. The Megamid’s advantages are (i) weight and (ii) in snow, you can actually create a lot of headroom by excavating a bit underneath the tent. But on a cold night, when you’re sleeping directly on the snow, with wind and spin-drift blowing in from below, those advantages look a lot less attractive! I know it’s largely psychological (since I’ve heard you get only an extra 10 degrees or so by having a floor), sleeping on the bare snow under a flimsy piece of tent fabric is a bit lacking. And you need to be careful with standing up in a Megamid – if you break through the top crust of snow, you’ll forever have a big post hole in your floor.
To my surprise, we awoke at 4:30 AM to clearing skies and somewhat more promising weather. My boots were frozen solid – I had a hell of a time just tying the laces. Some of our party donned appropriately motherly clothing. The hike up to the crater isn’t technical – just a long slog. We cached our snowshoes about half way up and used crampons the rest of the way.
Many of the climbers that day were skiing. I would chose snowshoes over skis any day of the week – they’re both more practical when you need to go over all sorts of funky terrain and seemingly a lot less hassle. Sure, you don’t have the elegant glamour of making those long graceful turns down the mountain in untouched powder, but the humble snowshoe to me is easier on my legs, is easier to climb in, is better in a wider variety of conditions and is really easy to transport.
Reaching the top of Mt. Saint Helens is called “cratering”, which sounds a lot less cool than “summiting”. We cratered pretty early in the day and headed down in decent weather. It was the first climb of the season for me and was hard. But as we broke through the weather, you could see the most sublime line of peaks emerging out of the clouds – Rainier, Adams, Hood and so many others. Even in the cold conditions and fresh snow, steam rose from the caldera.
Photo credit: Tom McPharlin
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