How Not to Climb Mount St Helens

7.21.2008

“Dude, I have very limited visibility," Blake yells up at Patrick. Basketball sized rocks fly by barely missing him. “Don’t climb down yet,” he says. “You’re knocking everything loose.” Patrick stops descending, but it's not really falling rocks that he’s worried about. He’s worried that the part of the volcano we chose to summit will cave in soon. I, on the other hand, am sliding down uncontrollably on my back through the ash, trying to dig my axe into the side of the ground, and laughing with a mix of humor and hysteria. I narrowly avoided peeing on myself.

It is on this note that I will introduce this post. There are many online articles telling you how to hike Mount St Helens. They offer useful advice, trip preparation, planning and safety measures. In the interest of avoiding redundancy, I am going to tell you something different. I am going to tell you how not to hike Mt. St Helens--pointers on good things to avoid.

For starters, don’t sleep in. Most people start at four or five in the morning so that they can descend while there is still light. We started at nine. (my fault, admittedly).

Also, when you get dressed, don’t wear tight pants. I had bought my hiking pants hoping they would make my butt look good. However, with all of the high stepping involved, I could feel the fabric pulling against the seams. It was a bit like hiking in salami.

Not to mention all of the extra effort it takes to nearly rip your pants into shreds and hike. It is also not a good idea to wear underwear that self destructs. By the end of the trip, Blake’s boxers had somehow been torn to bits. Not his shorts mind you, just his boxers. It's a bit of a feat to do that, somewhat akin to pulling destroyed underpants out of a hat.

As there was still snow on the mountain, we brought ice axes to help us negotiate any tricky spots. With these strapped to our backs, we looked like a menacing brigade, as if a team of axe murderers had decided to do some bonding and trust building exercises.

We played games to pass the time, which I do recommend. I don’t recommend the ones we played. There’s only so many times that you can do, “I’m thinking of an animal” without being tempted to use your ice axe on a companion.

Wanting an extra challenge and hoping to avoid my pants splitting into two, I decided to leave the volcanic rock and hike up the snow. This is also a good thing not to do. In order to avoid sliding, I had to put one foot into the mountain at a horizontal angle, wedge the handle part of my axe into the snow, step my other foot over, dig in, rinse and repeat. Basically I did a one way version of the electric slide for four thousand feet.

Patrick and and Blake joined in doing a different step where you jam your toes into the mountain repeatedly to gain footing and rely on your axe for safety. In the event of a fall, we were to stick our axes in the ground so that they could catch on the ice.

Hiking on the snow leads you away from the trail, and, if you sleep in, don’t bring enough water and are relying on beans and lentils split between four people, it’s generally not a good thing to do. We hiked between rock outcroppings, axe murderers doing the horizontal two step, and rested every so often.

Once we had summited (I crawled up the last part on my stomach), it suddenly seemed like we were very far away from the base. We weren’t near the trail and couldn’t find any markers. Added to that, Steph was feeling sick and we were worried about losing light before we descended.

I was prepared. I had already made the complicated decision of who I would eat first. Here are some good tips on that: Always save the vegetarians for last. They pose the least threat as they probably wouldn’t eat you anyways. If possible, go for the strongest person in your group. Patrick was in the best shape and I figured that if I was going to eat him, I would have to have numbers on my side. On this note, if you are going to eat one of your friends in the woods, don’t let everyone have an axe. Keep that one for yourself.

We rode down the mountain on asses doing something called glacading. In this, you sit down, stick your axe into the snow and use it as a rudder. Doing this for a short time is fun, but, as we did most of our descent this way, I got pretty cold. Once the numbness sets in it's not too big of a deal. By the end, the seat of my pants were completely worn through. So if you are going to glacade down the mountain, let me give you one important reminder:

Don’t choose that day to skip the underwear.

Stephanie, on the other hand, had a great idea. She stuck her legs out from inside a trash bag and rode down the mountain in plastic bloomers.

We finally found the trail again and hiked out with some light left in the day. I was at this point feeling pretty hardcore until three Hollister wearing high schoolers passed us. They were cute and clean and we, well, we looked like something straight out of the movie Castaway.

My story may make the trip sound very hardcore, but some of the pictures don't quite match up to my memory. I’ve tilted a few to make our hike look steeper. Take this one, for example. Normally, it looks pretty cool, but tilt it a little to the side, and you enter into extreme badass territory.

I’d gladly do the hike again, hopefully informed on what not to do when climbing Mount St Helens.