[SeanSullivan86]

On May 1st I attempted St Helens but turned around at 5600' because of high winds and low visibility. Ted and I waited for a nice weather day to give it another shot. Wednesday evening we drove down from Seattle and bivy'd at the trailhead. We woke up at 5 and were on our way at 5:35, with 2 parties ahead of us. We hiked in the longer-than-I'd-like-it-to-be approach, with snow cover starting about a mile from the parking lot. On our attempt earlier this month, we'd never seen the upper mountain and were greatly impressed when we came around a bend and saw the entire mountain.

The snow was hard and we put on crampons around 5000' as we worked our way up a ridge before the route widens into a large snowfield. We stopped at 5600', our previous high point, near some kind of instrument for awhile before attacking the rest of the mountain.

The snow generally supported our weight so we sometimes did ascending traverses across the route and sometimes just followed the existing steps straight up. While we were moving we made good time, but our rests were long and casual. We stopped again at 6900' below the steepest section of the route.

As we neared the rim I was feeling the 5000'+ vertical feet we'd just climbed and stopped again at 7900' before the last push. We reached the crater rim to the east of the true summit at 10:41, a little over 5 hours on the route. The wind picked up when we arrived at the rim, but this was a welcome relief in the heat.

We took pictures, respected the cornices, and plodded along below the rim up to the true summit, calling it good when we were probably 50' from the edge.

We got in several glissade runs on the descent but many of them were either icy (painful) or too slow. We saw several large blocks that had broken off of cornices and caused some wet snow avalanches, but didn't see any slides ourselves. After a long slog back out through the soft snow we reached the car at 2:28, almost 9 hours after leaving.

The numbers: 11 miles ? 5800' elevation gain (2700' to 8350' + 150' reclimbed on the rim to get true summit) 25ish lb pack 5:06 ascent (to rim) :: Best 30 minutes = 888' from 5645' to 6533' (1770'/hour) 1:19 on and near the rim 2:28 descent :: Best 5 minutes (glissade) = -745' from 7515' to 6770' (-149'/minute) ------- 8:53 total

[mtn.climber]

[SeanSullivan86]

Ted ran into the ironing board during a glissade. It was buried under a few inches of snow. He had a few tries sledding on it and then it took off down the mountain when he wiped out.

[beaudaddy]

Nice Report. I'm hoping for the conditions to be good next weekend so we can give this one a go!!!

[kite]

I love the ironing board photo, good job on packing it down, but you have to wonder about the person that packed it up....

[SeanSullivan86]

[The Angry Hiker]

You never know when you might need to iron some shirts.

[dawgTE]

I too was up there Friday. Our pictures damn near look identical. We left the parking lot at 5:30 and made the top at 10am.

[fourteen410]

Nice work, Sean! The ironing board is from the Mothers Day climb -- people climb in dresses, but some take it to the next level: