Hiking Mount St. Helens

Mount St. Helens is a volcanic mountain in southern Washington state. It’s notorious for it’s major eruption on May 18, 1980, which was the most destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States

I actually stopped here on my drive from Astoria, Oregon to Seattle last Sunday. Unfortunately, I didn’t prepare or research anything in advance. I thought I’d drive to the Visitors Center and map out a plan from there.

My cell phone had no signal and for whatever reason the GPS in my car had taken me up the backside of the mountain (opposite side from the visitors center). To correct for my mistake I needed to drive over an hour back around to the other side of the mountain. Sigh…

Before I waste another hour driving, I felt like I could salvage my mistake as there was some hiking trails here that I thought led all the way to the rim. I pull into a trailhead parking lot and look at the trail map.

I wasn’t even wearing my normal hiking clothes and didn’t feel like changing. Instead I was wearing casual shorts, a t-shirt and tennis shoes. Since I was spending most of my day driving to Seattle I really wasn’t in the mood to do an all day hike – or get all sweaty for that matter. The clothes I was wearing reaffirmed that.

I studied the trail map. It didn’t have any mileage indicators on it but it appeared to me to be about a 3 mile hike. Or so I thought anyways. I also didn’t have any water and it was another hot day (mid 90s). But it’s only a 3 mile hike. I’m not too worried about not having water on a 3 mile hike. “I can do it”…trying to talk myself into it. So I set off.

Strangely enough I also bring my Camelbak with me even though I have no water and there isn’t really anything in it. Force of habit maybe. This whole situation is making me feel very unprepared.

Okay, that sounds about right. Timberline 2 miles. Then maybe another mile to the rim?

Slow and steady climb.

At least its mostly shaded. Not sweating much yet.

Getting closer to the Timerline. Things starting to open up a bit more.

Starting to get sweaty now.

I passed a couple people heading back down asking me if I’m heading up alone. Obviously nobody is with me. I respond with a “yes”. Why are they asking me that? It seemed strange but I just breeze on by.

The trail starts to become a light bouldering trail. Okay, perhaps this last mile is just a bit of a rock climb.

Starting to see some nice views from here.I pass this guy who also is concerned I’m going up alone and says “it’s pretty late in the day to be heading up. How much water did you bring?”. I know I didn’t bring ANY water but I’m now all of a sudden feeling foolish wearing my casual shorts and tennis shoes and also answering “NONE”…so I instead say “very little”. Technically, none is very little so…

I also quickly came to the realization that this probably wasn’t a 3 mile hike. I had started thinking if this isn’t a 3 mile hike I’m not going much further as I felt I had already gone about 3+ miles already.

So I ask him how much further to the top and he says about 6 miles. 6 miles of non-technical rock climbing. I assured him I was only going a little further and heading back, which I now was.

Yep that is not a mile away. Not even close from here. Hard to tell from this pic but I climbed a little further still to try to get a slightly better view and I felt pretty foolish knowing how wrong I was about this whole trail.

No wonder people kept expressing concern on the way up. Most people start this hike early morning and it’s an all day hike up and back. Or they get a permit and camp overnight at the rim. Neither of which I was doing.

Even though I didn’t get the ultimate views I was searching for, these aren’t bad from here.

I didn’t want to waste anymore time (if this could be deemed wasting time), so I scramble down the rocks, and swiftly head back to the trailhead. This whole excursion was about a 2 hour side journey. From here I still have to drive an hour to get back around the mountain and on the road to Seattle.

Drive by this pretty cool view on my way down from the trailhead.

So now I’m back on the highway to Seattle and I pass the Mount St. Helens Visitor Center exit. I decide to see if I can still check it out. I’m still trying to salvage this mission! Of course they are closing in 15 minutes.  So I had to rush through there without really seeing much unfortunately. That was disappointing.

From here it’s a 75 minute drive up to the crater. I don’t have time for that. It’s getting late in the day and I still have 2+ hours of driving to Seattle. So I hit the road, slightly dejected.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the full experience I wanted from Mount St. Helens. However, I did get an adventure. Due to my lack of preparation for hiking Mount St. Helens, I kind of bungled my visit a bit.

So let that be a lesson to you – sometimes a little preparation is a good thing. That and a reliable cell phone.

 

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