Mount St. Helens/Worm Flows

Our group traveled down Saturday afternoon/evening and camped at our cars in the Marble Mtn Sno Park along with hundreds of our new friends on the last weekend before permit season.  It was colder than expected overnight and everything was covered in frost in the a.m.  Good reminder to keep your ski boots in the car or tent!

We started skinning at 6:30 thinking the slope would soften for skiing around 11:00 or noon and backwards planning our departure time.  Gorgeous weather and a well beat in skin and boot tracks made the ascent very straight forward.  We broke into two groups of two, one that skinned all the way up and the other booted all the way up.

There was a low but constant wind all day, which was enough to keep you cool during the uphill work but also kept the snow surface cold and quite hard.  Quite a bit of evidence of recent wet-loose avy activity as the snow all week followed by the warm-up on Friday.  However the snow was hard enough that this was never a concern on Sunday.

We regrouped at the summit, rested up, transitioned, and began skiing at 12:30.  After the cornice failure accident the day before, we were careful to give the cornice a wide berth helped by wanding by volunteers from the Mt St Helens Insitute.

Because of the refrozen chopped up snow from the day before that never really softened the skiing was bone rattling but strangely fun.  

We skied the Worm Flow down to Chocolate Falls and then skied the cross country trails back to the car a bit less than an hour after ripping skins for a fun early season day volcano skiing!