My Mountaineer Friends and I Take on Mt. St. Helens

The view of Mt. St. Helens as we set out on foot.

Although I don’t have the best memory of all events from my childhood, I distinctly remember not being a fan of volcanoes when I was a little kid.  I remember a book about volcanoes that my brother, Danny, brought home from school.  I don’t know if I was able to read it at the time, but I do remember the images of houses buried to the edge of the roof in the book.  How horrifying!  We lived in a three-story house.  That, my friends, is a shitload of lava.  Screw that.  I didn’t want any part of it.  Now, fast forward to the spring of 1980 and to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.  I was a little older, and I’d probably learned that there weren’t any active volcanoes in Maine. I’m sure that I’d learned enough about geography to know how far away Washington was.  I just remember watching the news stories and seeing smoke and ash billowing from the mountain. As a ten-year-old, I made no immediate plans to go visit Mt. St. Helens, and I never thought I’d be hiking to that crater as an adult.

Skip ahead to my recent army reserve annual training trip to Ft. Lewis, Washington when some friends and I took one of our days off to go climb Mt. St. Helens.  A few days earlier we’d climbed to 10,000 feet on Mt. Rainier, and we wanted to conquer another mountain while we were out there. Unfortunately, there are only a hundred permits to climb above 4,800 feet each day, and it’s all booked through September.  So we packed our new gaiters, some food and water, and some extra socks and stuff, and we went to the Johnston Ridge Observatory north of St. Helens across the South Fork Toutle River Valley, hoping that someone might have blown off their reservation.

Of course, this was a really dumb plan.  To climb the mountain to the top of the crater, we should have gone to the South Side, you know, where the climbing routes are.  My friend, Bruce, and I may have actually made use of the gaiters we bought at the Tacoma REI the night before. There is snow up there.  We had decided to gear up, not wanting to risk climbing another mountain on balls alone.  The guy at REI was really helpful.  A friend of his had climbed St. Helens a few days before, and he advised us on gear we might need for the current conditions.  He said that gaiters might be a good idea, and that for the love of God, we should get some moisture-wicking clothes, man.  I had some decent hiking shoes and socks, so I just bought the gaiters and a moisture-wicking T-shirt.  Oh, and not wanting to tempt fate with snow-blindness again, I got some sun-glasses.  And I bought a pocket knife.  I didn’t need a pocket knife, but I found one like the one I’d lost two years ago.  It has a cool carabiner/bottle opener thing.  I couldn’t afford not to get it.

Check it out, this T-shirt just
wicks moisture away from me.

Also, when I said that we set off for the Johnston Ridge Observatory and implied that there was some sort of planning involved in this, that was bullshit, too.  We kind of headed south on Interstate 5 looking for the “Mt. St. Helens Climbing Routes” exit.  Using the GPS for the “Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center” was somewhat helpful.  So were the directions we got, three times, one set of them from people at a Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center.

So, there we were, ready to climb Mt. St. Helens.  The Forest Service lady, Peg, suggested that we go to some bullshit-ass viewpoint place, about a five-mile hike from Johnston Ridge, because the view is nice there.  Thanks, Peg.  But, we explained to her that we’re mountaineers, and we wanted to go there, pointing to the mountain.  She suggested that we go to the Loowit Falls Trail, about a seven-mile hike from Johnston Ridge.  (We learned that the trail was about seven miles away and the falls are about eight.)  While at first there was a bit of “hey-it’s-two-o’clock-and-it-took-two-hours-to-get-here-do-we-really-want-to-set-out-on-such-a-long-hike,” we decided, “Fuck it.  We’re mountaineers, man.”  A little while later, we saw our last fellow human for about five hours.

  Of course pointing out that we saw our last fellow human for about five hours is kind of dumb.  I mean, people do that all the time.  Five hours is nuthin’.  Our solitude—if four people can have solitude—was just amplified by the desolation of the valley.  That volcano blew the living hell out of everything there.  Everything. 

It would have made a perfect location for NASA to stage the moon landing in 1969. Yeah, perfect.  Then they let it sit there for 11 years, making up this whole “volcano” thing to ‘splain why there was absolutely nuthin’ there.  But I’ll stop with the bullshit conspiracies.  I’ll tackle these and others on another day.  I’ll explain why the Constitution isn’t real.  It was written by Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston and paid for by a grant from the NRA.  Maybe I’ll tell you all how the Berlin Wall was bullshit, too.  JFK, Raytheon, and Colt subsidized it to help keep the Cold War going after it started to peter out in the late 1950’s.

Perhaps I’m digressing.

Spirit Lake, from the mountain.

Anyway, one look at the valley on the crater side of Mt. St. Helens, and I couldn’t help but be awed by the unspeakable power of the earth.  There was a big-ass void in a mountain about the size of oh, I don’t know, a fucking cubic mile.  Then there was a valley with nothing.  Looking in the opposite direction from Johnston Ridge, mountains were covered with what used to be a forest, trees lying like scattered matchsticks all over the place.  Looking out toward the mountain and Spirit Lake, the lee side of spurs and ridges showed some green new growth, but the blast sides were still mostly barren, still healing from the eruption.  The view demonstrated how we, as a species, are, and will always be, at the mercy of the earth.

We had to hike along the boundary trail on the ridgeline, disturbingly at first, toward Spirit Lake, and not toward the mountain.  But as we hiked, I realized that this was all being preserved.  Nature was taking her time to restore, and the Forest Service, the US Geological Survey, probably some garden club from Yakima, and who knows who else was studying the progress of the restoration of this land, from the vast emptiness following the blast to whatever nature may bring in the years to come.  I probably wouldn’t have had to “realize” this if I’d just read a sign or placard thing or two along the way.  It’s not a secret.  I did read some signs that said something like “stay on trails and paved areas” and “$100 minimum fine.” Informative stuff.  Oh, and did you know that “plants grow by the inch and die by the foot.”  They do.  It’s our feet that kill them when we step on them.  Most of them don’t die as soon as they reach a foot tall.  Take trees, for example.  They get pretty tall.  Of course, this could be bullshit, too.  I don’t always bother to be well-informed. 

A thousand or so of the billions of caterpillars.

You know what nature had brought to that valley, though?  Caterpillars.  Shitloads of ‘em.  It’s caterpillar country out there.  But as we walked and observed, there were mosses and grasses growing.  There were flowers, too, pretty wildflowers, which I would have picked for my girlfriend, but I don’t think I could have picked $100-worth of them.  They probably would have died before I got them to her.

 But anyway, having only seen pictures, and most of those since the hike, it was hard to really grasp that the land where we stood was well forested before the eruption.  All we could see looked like the desert.  We saw Spirit Lake, but we didn’t know that the current lake was a few hundred feet higher than the previous one, now filled with ash and debris from the eruption. Even as we stood on the cliff of Loowit Canyon and took pictures of the falls, it didn’t fully dawn on me that this creek wasn’t there before 1980 and neither was the canyon.  It’s been carved out by erosion, and it continues to change.

For some reason, this view wouldn't suffice.

We foolishly climbed higher above the cliff to get better views.  I realized how stupid this was about halfway up.  We were on a pile of loose rocks that the aforementioned creek had cut through like butter about 30 feet from us, and we were over a cliff.  Loose rock climbing is a pretty dumb adventure sport.  I tried to mountain goat my way down, jumping from bigger rock to bigger rock on my way and hoping desperately that these bigger rocks were as stable as they looked.  But we had climbed higher for the view, always the view, and it was worth it.  I stood there late on that day as high as we would get on Mt. St. Helens even though there was so much higher to go.  I looked out and loved what I saw.  Nature, in an ironically pristine state, so much of it untouched just so we can watch it grow and learn from it.

We absolutely did not cut some distance out of the return trip
by heading toward the big rock.  Absolutely not.

This hike was different from our climb up Rainier.  On Rainier, I felt my body disagreeing with each step as we trekked higher, and it’s difficult not to be amazed by the alpine glory of Rainier and the surrounding mountains.  The view from St. Helens was different.  It’s not slap-you-in-the-face alpine glorious, and there wasn’t the thin air to intoxicate me and tell me how amazing and dangerous this was.  The view from the lower lip of the Mt. St. Helens crater is different.  It tells a story, a story of power and destruction, and of the long, slow, and glorious rebirth of the land.  It’s a story the earth has been telling forever, but we don’t always recognize it.  It’s a story that’s still being told to me as I follow the endless links about Mt. St. Helens.  Someday, I’ll go back, and the story will have changed, but next time, I’ll pay attention to that long, slow exposition of the earth’s narrative.  I can’t wait.

And when I do go, I’ll wear the moisture-wicking underdrawers that I just ordered with a Groupon.  Fifteen or so miles of hiking makes for significant chafing.

The Idiot’s Tale: Mount Rainier to 10,000 Feet

                I had joked on Facebook earlier in the day that if I didn’t make it back, please tell my kids and grandsons I love them.  I had joked with the others on the trip, “If I don’t make it, tell our story.  Tell it!”  But as we approached 10,000 feet, I had long since realized that this was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.  The air was thin.  The mere exertion of a few steps left us breathless.  We struggled to crest a slope that seemed as if it was beyond cresting.  I was genuinely afraid of any number of calamities befalling us, and I genuinely regretted the flippant tone of my Facebook post.  I was actively trying to suppress thoughts about the perils of our pending descent when there it was, Camp Muir, a base camp at just over 10,000 feet.

                Now the day had started innocently enough.  We were going to Mount Rainier, and we were going to do some hiking starting at the Paradise Visitor Center, which is about 5,400 feet above sea-level.  Last year, during my annual training visit to Fort Lewis, Washington, some friends and I had gone to Mount Rainier and walked around a little at Paradise, and then we stopped along the way down for some photo ops.  My friend, Nate, had gone last year later in the summer than I had, and he had done some hiking from Paradise.  A few of us decided that we wanted to do some hiking there as well.  Somewhere along the way, we decided to go for Muir, perhaps after a fair amount of oxygen deprivation.

Oxygen deprivation sets in.  I couldn't even line-up my buttons. How embarrassing.

                I know what you’re thinking, “Ted, you’re a bad-ass.  You’re in the army reserve for Pete’s sake.  You’re a damn soldier!”  And while all of this is true, none of it could really prepare me for such a hike.  I may be in the army reserve, but I’m less than a year from my planned retirement.  I do have to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test, but I have a bad back and a number of other chronic joint strains.  I haven’t been able to do the run in about two years because it leaves me with horrific back spasms for a week or so.  Now, I do a two-and-a-half-mile walk instead of a two-mile run.  I do a remarkably small amount of exercise, and I can’t do the sit-ups for the test anymore because the last time I started to ready myself for the test, I had to stop after four sit-ups.  Yes, four.  My back was killing me for the two weeks I was waiting for an appointment with my chiropractor.

                Can you imagine how awesome I would be if I weren’t such a broken-down, injury-plagued, old soldier?  Yeah, it blows my mind thinking about it, too.

                My friends, Jay and Bruce, who also made the climb, are in much better shape than I.  They actually work out and run and shit like that.  By the way, one of them had the idea to keep climbing.  It certainly wasn’t my idea.  I just wasn’t ready to quit.  I have this stupid thing I do sometimes where I don’t like to show weakness.  It doesn’t happen that often, of course.  I am—all will agree—pretty damn awesome.

                At some point after Panorama Point on the Skyline Trail, we kept climbing up.  Nate stayed behind with the less experienced climbers—even less experienced than us—but he planned to climb behind us and meet us along the way.  After Panorama we saw increasingly fewer casual hikers.  They all had this fancy gear and experience and shit like that.  As we left them in our wake, we all thought that some of these would have been a good idea, perhaps with some of these or these.  It would have been a good idea to have some of these, and one of these may have come in handy as well. And on the descent, I would have preferred to wear a pair of these as I slid down the Muir Snow Field on my ass.

                In retrospect, we realized that we passed so many people because we were too dumb to pace ourselves.  I’ve said before that no one ever accused me of not having half a brain.  Well, yesterday on Rainier, I was using the other half.

                No, we didn’t have any gear.  I was wearing my hiking shoes, shorts, a t-shirt, and a light button-down shirt, and I had a fleece jacket, my wind breaker, and a change of socks in my backpack, nary a stitch of Gore-Tex on my person.  Jay and Bruce were similarly equipped, although Bruce, being an experienced adventurer, had a North Face jacket.  I didn’t even have sunglasses, and my anxiety about snow blindness grew with each step after Nate pointed out that the conditions were ideal.  No, we had no gear.  Some may call it hubris.  Some may call it foolishness.  Me, I prefer to call it balls, and we were fully equipped with three sets of brass ones.

This is how mountaineers view the world.  Soak it in.

                And somewhere between 7,500 and 8,000, feet we really started to notice the lack of oxygen, but we climbed onward over the snow, trying to find paths where people had already climbed, so we could use their steps.  As we climbed, our steps grew shorter, baby-steps up the Muir Snow Field.  With each step my anxiety grew, and I started to feel that unfamiliar feeling that some of you may call surrender.  But the balls—or foolishness—in me stifled any chance to give voice to that feeling, and I hoped that Jay or Bruce would be the ones that decided we’d climbed high enough.

                Like I said, though, there it was, Camp Muir, close enough to give us a visual goal at the end of the seemingly crestless slope of the snow field.  We made it there, close enough to see the tents of the climbers with, you know, well-formed plans of ascent.  We approached to see the stone fortress of Camp Muir, and we said, “Fuck it.”  Smoked, beaten, and—at least for me—feeling the anxiety of the pending descent, we stopped and looked around.  With Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens in the distance, I don’t recall ever feeling so awed and humbled by the blend of the beautiful, the grand, and even the terrifying in the limitless vastness of nature. 

                Then, as we sat in the snow—Jay and Bruce on their army wet-weather coats, me on my soon-to-be-drenched LL Bean windbreaker—and changed our socks, I realized the full measure of torture that the descent could bring.  The impact of each step downward would compound the pressure on the stupid-ass bulging disc in my lumbar spine, inviting at least a few days’ worth of muscle spasms.  I reassured myself that I could probably get some Flexeril at an emergency room.  But no, as we had seen the experienced climbers slide down on their butts, we decided to try the same.  Often, a pile of snow would build up in front of us, making the descent slow.  Jay and Bruce quickly abandoned this method and pretty much ran down the snow field with gravity leading the way.  Me, I persevered, covering much of the snow field on my snow-drenched and frozen ass.

That's an ice-cold mountaineer's ass, soaking up some rays on the descent.

                After the snow field, the descent was quick, and each step was like sticking my foot in a bucket of ice water.  I made sure to identify us as the biggest idiots on the mountain that day.  Some people, not surprisingly, didn’t get it.  A couple people tried to argue their case, but I pointed out that they had, well, appropriate gear.  All we had were three sets of brass ones.  Case closed. 

                Back at Paradise, we quickly found Nate and the van.  I got in the back and stripped from the waist down.  I had nothing to change into.  I just covered my lap and my junk with my button-down shirt and let the feeling come back to my ass as we got close to the Fort Lewis gate.  On the van, someone read aloud from the Mount Rainier National Park brochure.  It said that climbing Mount Rainier is hazardous and that the three key elements to a climb are proper equipment, experience, and excellent physical conditioning.  I might suggest that they add serious balls to that list.

Three ill-equipped, albeit ballsy mountaineers.

                  Climbing to 10,000 feet on Mount Rainier is unquestionably the stupidest thing I have ever done.  I could continue to catalogue the mistakes we made and the perils involved.  Screw that.  Glory trumps regret.  I will not soon forget the feeling of success and relief, the joy of a heretofore unimaginable accomplishment, or the view from nearly two miles above sea-level.