Skiing Mt. St. Helens

Back in May of '07, four of us (Bryce, Kelly, and Frederick) headed up Mt. St. Helens and reached the rim. Unfortunately, on that day we never actually saw the rim. Or the crater. Or the other cool stuff that makes St. Helens amazing. At the time it was still a great trip, but I definitely wanted to return to see the inside of the crater for myself.

Andy and Cheri decided that they wanted to attempt St. Helens. On skis (Andy) and snowboard (Cheri). In retrospect, it was pretty bold of them to make the attempt: Cheri had never been on skins before and had only taken her splitboard out once before (at the resorts), and Andy had limited backcountry ski experience.

I haven't done a ton of backcountry skiing either (I've been out about a half-dozen times) but felt reassured by the fact that we'd be on wide-open slopes and that I'd be on rented randonee skis instead of my telemarks.

If you're not familiar with these kinds of skis, randonee skis are designed for skiing in the backcountry (i.e. in areas not served by ski lifts), but are otherwise very similar to downhill skis. The difference is that their bindings can switch between "walk" and "ski" modes. In walk mode, your boot is free to pivot about the toe; in ski mode, the heel of the boot is locked firmly against the ski. In contrast, with telemark skis, your heel is never locked down. For those of us who grew up on downhill skis, the transition of learning to telemark skis can be long... and painful (as the bruises on my legs from the prior weekend attest to).

The day began with a 3:30 a.m. wakeup, a 4:00 a.m. meetup, and a 7:45 a.m. arrival at the trailhead (after stopping for gas/snacks around Olympia). At 8:20 we were finally on our way from the Marble Mountain Sno-Park, heading up the standard winter route (Worm Flows). During the off-season (N0vember-April), permits are simply acquired at the trailhead - no online registration or quotas.

There were some clouds and some sun on the way up; I was down to just a t-shirt when the roasting on the open snow fields was in full force. One wrinkle in our plans was that neither Andy nor Cheri felt terribly comfortable with the skinning up once we got above the treeline and ended up booting up from about 4000'. The windblown snow had created a powdery crust that made the skinning a bit tricky; I found myself flat on my face more than once. However, I stubbornly refused to put my skis on my back and did make it to the rim with skis on my feet the whole way.

We were eventually all on the crater rim by 2:30 p.m., which was the time that I had calculated should be our turnaround time, based on a worst-case descent time of 3 hours. The edge of the rim is a dangerous place; it can be corniced and has a steep dropoff to the crater floor. I found a relatively safe place that afforded some views of the interior of the crater and got to see some steam rising and snapped a few photos, with Mt. Rainier providing an excellent backdrop. Bueno!

Although none of us thought we would have a terrible time getting down the mountain, after several attempted turns on the breakable crust and uncomfortable falls, Andy decided that he wasn't going to be able to ski down the mountain after all. More booting for Andy. Yikes! Cheri, a self-proclaimed "good snowboarder" had a tough time as well, and I really had to work hard to make turns and my share of wipeouts when the skis didn't turn the way I intended. I'm not sure how much of this had to do with the skis; I think that most of the problem was with the snow conditions. At least we all had fun skiing/boarding on the section below tree-line; I had been a little nervous that the trail would be too narrow, but on the descent I found that it was perfect for some mild downhill fun!

All in all, it took 2 hours and 45 minutes for us to get back down to the cars, arriving just before dark. (Phew!)

After a dinner in Cougar, WA that involved Susan eating everyone's leftover food (the hollow leg strikes again), our trio hit the road again.

After hitting construction traffic just a few miles from home, we made it back to Cheri's place at 10 p.m. A long, semi-epic day!

What I learned:

1. Randonee skis are awesome. They make kick-turns easier when turning switchbacks. They make the downhills much easier. The brakes not only decrease the chance of losing a ski, but make them easier to carry around the parking lot than tele skis. The only minor downside that I noticed is that if one ski slips out from under you when skinning up, the ski really shoots back under you on randonee skis; on tele's, this is mitigated by the boot/binding springiness. To be fair, I didn't do a side-by-side comparison and try to skin and ski on both tele and randonee skis on the same slopes on the same day. But I'm pretty convinced that the randonee skis are the way of the future for Susan. Unfortunately the boots, skis, and bindings are so expensive, but they are on sale now as the end of winter nears... :)
2. What looks like an easy-to-ski slope might not be so easy when you actually try it. Even though it really stinks to have to hike up the same section twice, try skiing a test section on your way up so that you know if you'll have to boot down the entire 5000' of open snowfield you're heading up. On this trip, everything ended up fine despite our difficulties with our descent, but if we had really been depending on our descent taking less than an hour, things could have gotten very difficult very quickly.
   
   

Thanks to Andy for the pictures; my hard drive died after I copied my pictures from my camera but before I could post them!