Forum Index > Trip Reports > Denny Mountain - 5/13/18
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Just_Some_Hiker
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PostSun May 13, 2018 6:20 pm 
The uphill travel restrictions have finally been lifted at Alpental, so if you've ever had the urge to skin/hike/run/crabwalk to the summit, now is the time. Snow coverage is still good -- all the way from the parking lot to the summit. With this nuclear heatwave, however, it's probably not going to last for long. Beware of streams running under the snowpack.

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zephyr
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PostSun May 13, 2018 7:03 pm 
Wow. You're living the dream, J_S_H. Beautiful photos. I've had friends who have hiked to the summit but they did it in late summer. They said it was a hot brush bash. I may have heard the word "miserable" or at least "challenging". wink.gif Your timing looks perfect. ~z So were others up there or was this person in your party?
Just_Some_Hiker wrote:

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Just_Some_Hiker
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PostSun May 13, 2018 7:07 pm 
zephyr wrote:
So were others up there or was this person in your party?
There were two hikers just ahead of me and about six skiers behind me. Although a few looked like they were calling it quits about halfway -- it was super hot out!

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Snowdog
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PostMon May 14, 2018 8:32 am 
I was there yesterday too! Spectacular day! My son & I hiked/skinned up and skied/boarded down, with Isabel chasing after us. Perfect Mother's Day outing! cool.gif

'we don't have time for a shortcut'
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Randito
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PostMon May 14, 2018 10:06 am 
zephyr wrote:
I may have heard the word "miserable" or at least "challenging". wink.gif
After the snow is gone, yep there is considerable brush. Not quite North Cascades level brush, but enough to preclude "trail running" type outings.

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nordique
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PostMon May 14, 2018 4:24 pm 
Thanks for the TR! I last hiked to that summit on the day that St Helens blew, in--what?--1980! I'd skied down from the top of the chair many times, up there, and felt far less secure without my telemark skis with their metal edges. Atop Denny Peak, we noticed a strange dark cloud to the south--and only when we got back down, and back on I-90, seeing muddy looking cars heading west, did we figure that St Helens had erupted!

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fourteen410
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PostTue May 15, 2018 2:12 pm 
That's a great story, Nordique!

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HitTheTrail
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PostTue May 15, 2018 4:53 pm 
Nice eye candy JSH up.gif
nordique wrote:
Atop Denny Peak, we noticed a strange dark cloud to the south
fourteen410 wrote:
That's a great story, Nordique!
Here's another.... My wife and I were working at the Hanford Project in the Tri-Cities when Mt. St. Helens blew. I was pulling weeds in the garden that morning when the sky suddenly turned dark. My wife stuck her head out the door and said "you better get your butt in the house before it starts to rain". Then ash started falling. We put newspapers on the deck and collected lots of it as a souvenir (that we still have).

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Just_Some_Hiker
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PostThu May 17, 2018 12:41 pm 
HitTheTrail wrote:
My wife stuck her head out the door and said "you better get your butt in the house before it starts to rain".
An interesting time to be alive and living in WA. I wish I could have climbed MSH when it was still intact.

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Brushbuffalo
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PostThu May 17, 2018 2:09 pm 
Just_Some_Hiker wrote:
An interesting time to be alive and living in WA. I wish I could have climbed MSH when it was still intact.
I climbed MSH a couple of times in the early 1960s. Before long there won't be too many of us old geezers who did the Dog's Head route from the Timberline parking lot on the north side. By the way, one of those climbs was in a huge party ( maybe 60?) with the Tacoma Mountaineers. Talk about a conga line!

Passing rocks and trees like they were standing still
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Mikey
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PostFri May 18, 2018 6:53 am 
We climbed Mt St Helens many times before it blew up some 38 years ago today. My Dad and I were x-country skiing on the 100 road NE of St Helens in March 1980 the day the tremors started but we did not feel the tremors. About a week later the Mtn blew a hole in the summit. In April 1980 I was able to get a USFS permit to enter the area for "research". During a visit to the north parking lot the Mtn was emitting gray-black smoke and rocks. Our USFS permit allowed us to stay in the area from 8am Thurs to 6 pm Sunday. USGS volcano scientists told us not to worry about the Mtn erupting because the lava would flow down the Mtn side slow enough so that we could drive out. I think the USGS scientists were familiar with Hawaii volcanoes. There were Richter 2-2.5 earthquakes about every 15-25 minutes. The scientists told us that bulge on the north side was expanding upwards about 5 ft/day. A helicopter was being used by the scientists to do something, perhaps install and maintain instruments. The scary part of this story is that 3 of us were scheduled to have our motorhome lab and instruments at the north parking lot over the April 17-18, 1980 weekend but luckily we cancelled the trip because the Mtn was quiet. That April 17-18, 1980 weekend I was the Mountaineer's Snow I field trip leader at Alpental and I was sitting high on a snow covered ski area hillside watching the practice when I heard the "pop" of the Mtn erupting. I do not recall seeing Nordique (Peter) climbing Denny. Some months after the Mtn eruption, the Weyerhaeuser safety engineer took us on a tour of their logging areas and there was lots of damage to their logging equipment.

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HitTheTrail
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PostSat May 19, 2018 5:14 am 
There was a mountaineering club in the Tri-Cities at that time (Intermountain Alpine Club I think) that were doing a lot of outings to the summit of Adams to get photos of the steam puffing on St. Helens. They had their tripods and cameras set up at the moment it blew. Most of the famous photos in Nat Geo and other places are from them. The blast was headed in their general direction and at some point they thought they were all going to die. So they lined up as a group in front of the tripod to wave goodbye to the world. We went to a presentation by them later and heard the interesting discussion first hand.

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Mikey
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PostSat May 19, 2018 10:49 pm 
As I recall, a group including Steve Sulzbacher MD (Seattle) were on the Mt Adams summit when Mt St Helens erupted on May 18, 1980 and they got some good photos. However, I was not able to find their photos posted on the internet.

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Just_Some_Hiker
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PostSat May 19, 2018 10:58 pm 

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