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Skiing On An Active Volcano

Our ski descent of Mount St. Helens

By Adventures Not Vacations

June 27^th, 2016

How to climb a volcano

If you spend any time in the mountains of Washington, you’ll wonder what it’s like to climb a volcano. There are several to choose from and thanks to a major eruption in 1980, Mount St. Helens is one of the easiest to climb. So that’s what Meghan and I set out to do.

Mount St. Helens is popular enough that there is a permit system in place to limit the number of people that climb each day. During the winter, it’s 500 people, which dwindles to 100 in the summer. This is to help protect the recovering ecosystem. The number is so much higher in the winter because the snow protects the mountain. Due to the challenges of dealing with snow, less people want to climb anyway. Snow wasn’t a problem for us, since we didn’t just want to climb a volcano, we wanted to ski down one. So, in March, we bought our permit for the first day of May and the last day of 500 people per day season.

Mount St. Helens is over 3 hours from Seattle and requires climbing more than a mile of vertical to reach the summit. We decided to drive down a day early and camp before making our summit attempt so we could get an early start.

Before going up we went down

There are two main places to camp the night before climbing Mount St. Helens. Marble Mountain Sno-Park is the most common for winter ascents, but the Climbers Bivouac is 1000 vertical feet higher, making for a shorter climb. We were hoping for an easier climb and drove to the Bivouac. Unfortunately, we found the road closed and had to deal with the extra climbing from the Sno-Park.

After setting up camp, we had some time to kill, so we made our way to the Ape Caves. The Ape Caves are a 2.4 mile long lava tube on the southern flank of Mount St. Helens. Meghan and I have always wanted to visit the caves, but it never seemed worth the drive for just a few miles of caving. Lucky for us, the Ape Caves were just a 15 minute drive from our campsite.

The main cave entrance is located right next to the parking lot. Instead of entering the cave there, we hiked up to the upper entrance and would follow the cave back to the parking lot. On the way there, we saw lots of smaller features where the ground had collapsed into old lava tubes.

The upper entrance is a massive hole in the ground, with a ladder leading down to the floor of the lava tube. Soon after entering the cave, we were in complete darkness and we all turned on our headlamps. The floor of the cave was surprisingly smooth and at times it looked like an old train tunnel. Other parts of the cave had collapsed and we had to scramble up and over rocks. There was even an 8 foot lava fall we had to climb down. It was a really cool way to get our adventure started.

Dark and early

Even after the eruption in 1980, Mount St. Helens requires 5700 feet of vertical climbing to reach the summit. With warm weather in the forecast, we wanted to summit before the sun turned the snow into a sloppy mess for the best climbing (and skiing.) So we did what is called an “alpine start.” We woke up before sunrise, cooked breakfast and started hiking.

Even with a good snow year, the snow was melting fast and we had to walk for a few miles before we could switch to our skis and skin up. These miles were brutal since we had to carry our skis and ski boots on our backs. We were rewarded, however, with some great early morning views of Mount St. Helens.

Following the worm Flows

Once we finally hit snow, we switched to skis and began the real climbing. Having the weight off our backs was nice, but skinning up steep icy slopes is no picnic. The traditional route for climbing when there is a lot of snow is the Worm Flows route. It’s called that because of the lava flows it follows that flowed from the summit.

The weather was beautiful, but the constant sunlight and warm weather didn’t make the climb any easier. We stopped as often to rest and reapply sunscreen as we did just to enjoy the views. We followed a slightly different route than the main group of climbers (the ones not on skis) and got to climb most of the mountain in relative solitude. As we neared the summit, the groups converged and we saw a lot more people.

On Top of old smokey

The final summit push was the hardest part of the climb. It was too steep to easily go straight up on skis, so we switchbacked our way up the mountain. As we climbed, other climbers would glissade (slide on their butts) down the mountain in deep channels. The occasional skier or snowboarder would also fly by, letting us know we were getting close.

As we neared the top, the sun was still shining, but the wind was blowing like crazy and it started to get cold. T-shirts turned into down jackets and half of the other climbers we saw looked like they were ready to summit Everest. Those of us who made it to the top first waited in the chilly wind for the others so we could celebrate with a summit beer together.

The summit is a wide flat area with room for all the different people that had climbed the mountain that day. We saw people in shorts, jeans, and costumes. As we enjoyed our beers and took pictures, you could see steam rising from the crater, a reminder that we were standing on the edge of one of the most active volcanoes in the US.

The long way down

Once you’re at the top, there’s only one way to go. Down. We took off our climbing skins, clamped down our heels, and headed off. We started our way down a large snowfield and got some amazing spring turns. The run was wide open and we could go as fast as we wanted. We passed people making the climb, happy that we finally got to enjoy the fun part.

As we got lower on the mountain, the snow got wetter and heavier. It felt a lot like water skiing. At one point, we saw another skier trigger a large, but slow moving, wet avalanche. It slid down harmlessly below us, but it was still pretty exciting to see. Eventually, we ran out of snow and we had to take off our skis and hike the rest of the way back to our campsite.