On Tuesday, July 1st at 5:10 in the morning, we set off on a brisk hike to climb Mount St. Helens. There were beautiful views the whole way up. The first two miles were an easy walk through  the forest with about a 1000 foot gain in elevation. Levi, Jesse and I forged ahead of Dad and Micah because we didn’t know what we were in for and Levi had to be off the mountain by twelve so he could catch his flight back home.

A view of Mount Adams from the lower slopes of Mt. St. Helens.

After we passed the tree line, we started the two miles of rock ridges. They were reasonably hard climbing over lots of boulders.

We stopped a few times on the rock slopes  for a few minutes  to rest, but Jesse and Levi kept us moving fast, so I couldn’t get too many pictures.

After the rock slopes, we had about a mile of steep ashy gravel to climb, by that time the thinner air and all the climbing as well as the dry wind had us tired, so we walked slower and took a number of breaks. We didn’t know how far we had to go because the mountain kept on seeming to get higher as we climbed. But all of a sudden at about 8:30 am we realized that we were at the top.

Of course we had to have a picture with a flag, because it was Canada Day. Notice another volcano, Mount Rainier, right over top of the flag.

Here is a picture of part of the inside of the crater. Unfortunately we couldn’t go any nearer the edge to get good pictures because there was snow hanging over the cliff and it would have been dangerous.

This is a view with Rainier in the back and part of Spirit Lake with its logs in the foreground.

Then came the fun part. Sliding down the mountain on garbage bags and on pants. At first we slid on our pants because we had left two of our packs part way down to speed things up. It was a good way to wear out pants because there was ash in the snow! We were glad we had brought garbage bags. The plan until the day before was to hike down, because we had heard that glissading (sliding) down the mountain was dangerous, but then the man working where we registered for our climbing permits said that many people did it and he had not heard of any injuries, so we should try it especially because of our time restraints. So we did. And we were thankful!

Micah and Dad were a ways behind us, they came within about an hour from the top, climbing about 4000 out of the 5000 ft of elevation. They decided to turn around then because of the time. So Levi, Jesse and I caught up to them by glissading down the mountain.

The rest of the trip down was pretty quick although there were some places we could not slide so that meant scrambling down the  rock ridges. Us older boys wanted to beat the eight  to twelve hours that most people do the climb in so once we got onto the path in the trees, we ran and walked fast. If you look closely, you can see Jesse glissading in the center of the picture.

Done! At 11:20am. 6 hrs and 10 minutes…5 miles up and 5 back down.

Then Micah and Dad came, a little later. It was a lot of fun plus a good workout! Levi headed for Vancouver with our aunt and got to his flight home on time so all was well. We are thankful for the safety that God granted to us on this climb.