8,365 feet
Worm Flows Ski
Mothers Day, May 13, 2007
It's been three years since the last Mt. St. Helens Mothers Day ski. The mountain had been closed for a couple years due to volcanic activity before they finally reopened it last summer, so we had a pretty nice-sized group of people ready to get back down there this year and everyone dusted off their old skiing dresses. I had to buy a new one because I took my old one back to Goodwill. Fortunately Kirsten and I happened across a very nice tropical print sun dress for $10 at Walgreens that fit the bill just fine. It even matched my skis and ski boots... I think.
Everyone trickled into the parking lot Saturday evening and after some debate about what time to get up in the morning, we settled on trying to head out by 7:30. Forecast wasn't great and indeed as we headed out it was cloudy and threatening to rain. The trail was dry for the first half mile or so and then when we hit snow and as we started climbing up toward treeline, tiny snow flakes started falling. Climbing up St Helens on Mothers Day is always quite a site. It's something to behold when people who aren't in dresses on a mountain look out of place. And it's quite hilarious to watch Murray get hit on by middle-aged men with moustaches.
About a thousand feet below the rim we climbed out of the clouds and had clear blue skies. We reached the crater rim after about 5 hours. The new crater additions that St Helens is building were pretty cool to see, and Rainier, Adams and Hood were all clearly visible. Chad topped out after a struggle for the last couple thousand feet, looking forlorn due to some intestinal problems. But after everyone took pictures and had a few drinks of beer, it was time for the glorious ski down.
To really get in the spirit, Marcus took his pants off from underneath his rather short dress. We started down on an aspect that was facing a little too much to the west and hadn't quite corned up. We did one group ski for a few hundred feet, then Marcus, perhaps with a little too much ski and too much alacrity for the conditions, washed out his tails and went for a slide on his side. The abrasian from the frozen snow gave him a nice bloddy 6 inch raspberry on his side. After giving him a little first aid (Tim's spare Goretex pants), we scooted back around to the south a bit and found the properly cured corn we were looking for. The skiing the rest of the way was fantastic, topped off by a little natural quarter pipe that people hit and caught some sick air off of. At the bottom the snow got a little gluey, but it was good enough that we didn't want to stop -- even when snow ran out, we'd walk across dirt in our skis to get to the next short patch of snow. Alas, eventually we came to the end of any continuous snow at all and had to walk the rest of the way back to the car.
It was great to be back at St Helens again. We had all missed her while she was closed for renovations.
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