On May 29, Jenny and I climbed Mount St. Helens. This was the second time for me, after summiting [1] in September 2013 via the Monitor Ridge route [2].
This time, we took the winter route, which is a few miles longer and follows the Wormflows to the east of the Monitor Ridge route, only to join the summer route a few hundred feet from the summit. The summer route had been opened just two days before, but we still wanted to use the winter route, and that was a great decision: While there were a bunch of hikers on the summer route, we saw only two skiers all day on the winter route
The visibility wasn’t as good as 2.5 years ago — Mount Hood was a constant companion, Mount Rainier was visible from the summit, though Mount Adams only peeked through the clouds occasionally — but the snow was beautiful. On the way down, we were able to glissade for about 3000 vertical feet. Epic.
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On the way to our camp site on Saturday, we also visited the Johnson Ridge Observatory and the Ape Cave, a 2-mile lava tube. Both are well worth the visit.
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