Washington State - South Cascades
Distance: 10.0 miles
Elevation gain: 4500 feet
Washington Trails Association (WTA) guide: Mount St Helens - Monitor Ridge
Mount Saint Helens is one of two popular mountains for non-technical mountaineering (no glacier crossing), and in late summer there isn't even any snow!
I did my first overnight summit with a group lead by R from Hike to a Summit. It was my first time camping overnight part way up the mountain on the way to a summit. My pack was heavy and I had to force myself to keep pace as we made our way to camp. The plan was to camp Saturday night and summit on Sunday, but the weather was holding nicely still and Sunday had been forecasted to rain, so we took a group vote and decided just to head straight to the summit that day.
The beginnings of our camp.
As we kept heading up, slowly the group members began to drop off until at last it was just MA, B, and myself nearing the top.
The sun was starting to set, the weather seemed like it was about to turn, and I was pretty far ahead of Misty Anne, who was pretty far ahead of Braunsen, so I stopped a few times to wave back at her to try to communicate whether she felt comfortable continuing on or not. I didn't get any sort of intelligible hand waving back, so after a few tries I just kept going since they were still heading my way.
Just as twilight began to settle, I made it to the top, with MA just minutes behind. We stood at the top and peered into the caldera, attempting to make sense of the ridges, but low light and low hanging clouds didn't provide great visibility. After taking some pictures and basking at the summit for a few minutes, wind chill began to set in. We tried to hold out for B, but he was having to stop frequently as his legs were cramping up. It seemed like it might start to snow, so MA and I began to head down and caught up with B around 300 feet of elevation down from the summit. We headed down together, and met up with the others at camp. The next morning it was pure drizzle and winds, so I am glad we went for the summit on Saturday!
(Many thanks to C and B for several of these pictures.)
