Mt St Helens - Monitor Ridge

 Nobody knows what to do in October. There isn’t enough snow falling to form a base, but it’s often too wet to go climbing. The biking can be good, but too often it is cold and wet. With the ski season stoke upon us, we chose to check out Mt St. Helens. This time of the year we wouldn't have to deal with the hassle of getting a permit, and hopefully there’d be at least some ski-able snow. We drove out on a Saturday evening and arrived at the trailhead around Dark. Keenan was using his moms Hyundai, which soon became problematic. While trying to sleep in it, alarms would go off once all the doors were closed. We couldn’t figure it out and eventually ended up propping a door open for the cold night. For those facing the same issue, google “rear occupant alert Hyundai”.

After a cozy night, we were heading out at 03:00 on Sunday. We skinned but in retrospect, should’ve walked due to the low snow coverage. We made it out of the trees and into the permit zone at 05:00 and worked our way up. Sadly for us there was a massive wind-crust. Even with ski crampons, it was extremely difficult to make upward progress. To slow us down even more, there were tons of exposed rocks to navigate around. We spent tons of time traversing towards skinnable slopes. In retrospect, we should have just booted up the whole Monitor Ridge.

Sharkies

Sloggin

We reached the summit crater at 10:30 and walked over to the true summit, reaching it at 11:00. 

With no clouds in the sky, it was a beautiful day. Looking into the crater was surreal, realizing that only half a century ago, this mountain was completely different. We walked back over to our boards and talked to some mountaineers, who asked if we were redbull or something. No, we were just two inexperienced, overstoked backcountry skiers with not much better to do for the weekend. While putting my binding on, I realized my rear didn’t fit. I didn’t have the screw for it and ended up ski-strapping my boot to the board. It was terrible but I had no alternative. We worked our way down the 1000’ of decent skiing before reaching shark infested territory. From here, I chose to give up snowboarding and bootpacking down. It was pretty demoralizing. Keenan kept skiing for 1000’ more before giving up from sharks.

Adams and Crater

Summit!

Summit selfie

We reached the car at 16:00, where we finally laid down our packs and started the drive home. While the skiing wasn’t amazing and the climb was terrible, I’m still glad we got it done. I probably wasn’t gonna do anything better with my weekend, and skiing is still skiing. I hope to pursue more October turns in the future.