Mount St. Helens

In July, me, Anna, and our friends Chris & Christina climbed Mt. St. Helens the volcano that famously blew its top in 1980.

Here are some photos of our climb!
Mt. St. Helens is no longer a technical climb. Before the major eruption, it was apparently a pretty difficult and interesting mountain to climb, but now it's a strenuous day hike with a lot of scrambling over boulders, and some slogging up ash the fields.

Unfortunately for us, it was very very foggy when we climbed it, as you can see from the photo below. Before it got foggy, there were some good views, but we got all the way to the top and looked down into the crater, and saw vast nothingness of fog and clouds. A bit anti-climactic. Despite having no sunshine, though, I got terribly sun burned.

Nevertheless, it was a great hike and Chris & Christina did a fine job planning the trip and making sure we were well prepared for it. Because of the way the permit system works, you have to choose the day of the hike way in advance, so you never know what the weather will be like.

For training, Anna and I climbed Larch Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge, (trailhead at Multnomah falls), as well as some smaller hikes. Larch Mountain turned out to be pretty good preparation for the climb of St. Helens, and as it turned out, had much better views that day. From Larch, you can see Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams and others. Sweet.