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Trip: Mount St Helens - Worm Flows Trip Date: 04/22/2018 Trip Report: One million of my best friends and I were on MSH today. We left the Marble Mountain SnoPark at 3:30 AM, able to ski from the parking lot! I got a whole lot of practice with my ski crampons! Up to the crater rim a bit past 9, hung out in the sun for about an hour and a half, then skiied some amazing AMAZING snow -- ah yes, this is what they call corn -- under a bluebird sky!!!!!!! I love spring skiing!!! I got to ski most of it in a tank top and rolled-up pants. 😁😁😁 Got a little sticky toward the bottom of the fun, but not too bad. On a few of the steeper parts we skiied, we saw some rollerballs and one very small wet loose slide. What an amazing day!!! So much better than hiking Monitor Ridge in August! Gear Notes: Sunscreen, ski crampons, patience Approach Notes: Snow from the TH!

An occasional application of skin wax on the plush and ironing the glue side with a brown paper bag seems to keep them going. If Jason can put the amount of mileage on his over 16 years, that's pretty solid endorsement.

Nice pair of dinosaur slippers. I've still got my first generation Fires from 1984, I forgot my EB's on a trip to Joshua Tree and wound up trading with Ray Olsen from FROG in an exchange in HVCG. Mine must be on the fifth sole or something; not a modern shoe for certain, but a great pair of all day shoes, mine still get out in the mountains on occasion.

I have old purple ascensions that I've had for 16 years and which are still my main pair of skins. They've outlasted two splitboards and are now on their third. I re-glue them ever couple of seasons and don't do much else @Alisse. They have a few slits from skinning over rocks but otherwise work fine still, fuzzy and all.

As a general rule, Hood doesn't set up to be "in" or "out" for long periods of time. It changes daily up there through mid summer. I was on lower Yokum the day of the accident and those were very unique conditions caused by a lot of direct sun followed by a very hard freeze and two consecutive clear nights. Two days later, it was a different mountain. A good general guideline is to avoid the upper slopes during changes in weather just as you would be wary of a snowpack undergoing rapid changes. For example, I'm very cautious about going up on the first sunny day after a large storm cycle. That's when the mountain will be changing the most, and shedding a lot of accumulated rime. So I try and wait until there has been at least one full day with the same conditions in which I plan to climb. For example, the freezing level is forecast to go from 7k tonight to almost 12k by Tuesday morning and it is supposed to stay high through Thursday. So for me, I would be worried about going on Tuesday in particular, seeing as it's the first day of a new set of parameters up there. That's not to say climbing Wednesday when it's 40 degrees on the summit is advisable, but it's probably going to be a lot less hairy than tomorrow and Tuesday. Anyway...them's my two cents.

Trip: Dragontail Peak - Triple Couloirs Trip Date: 03/31/2018 Trip Report: Quick conditions update, for those of us that don't have facebook and like CC as a resource! Anthony and I climbed TC car to car yesterday. What little ice there is in the sections between couloirs was very thing, not well formed, and poor quality. We brought screws but didn't really place any (I think I placed one 10cm for the sake of it but it wouldn't of held anything). We climbed up the right side of the runnels which seemed to me to offer more rock pro, since the ice wasn't taking screws. Run out mixed climbing and lots of piton placing! The second pitch was the most sketchy; the start was a short section of fun with a thin smear of snice in an open corner that we climbed delicately, but pretty soon that turned into snow on a short blank face with no ice or snice to help. Forunately there was an old rapel tat slung around a horn that with some funky rock climbing was just in reach, and I swallowed my pride and used it as aid in desperation. With some ice, even just a little, it would have been super fun. The exit out of that section was also delicate and engaging. The third pitch was really fun with a neat bit that combined dry tooling, chimneying, and an exit onto thin delicate snice, followed by some uncoslidated snow to add to the spice. The pitch between second and third couloirs was the least difficult I think, but by then the lack of sleep was catching up and I found it harder and more awkward than it really should have been. Overall the snow quality was great. The wind was calm and the views stellar, and it was cold enough but not too cold! A second party just ahead of us climbed up the first couloir a bit then traversed over and rapelled into the top of the 2nd runnels pitch. Thank you to them for kicking steps! It was a really fun day out and the hardest mixed climbing in the alpine I've done so far, and while there were some rather scary and run out climbing, I had so much fun. I've come to the conclusion that if you want to climb winter/spring alpine in the Cascades, you have to get comfortable with mixed climbing, as its just too damn hard to reliably find ice. Photo of N Face: Gear Notes: We brought set of cams from .01-1, a set of stoppers, 5 knifeblades/bugaboos, 1 lost arrow, and (2) 10, (3) 13, and (2) 16 cm screws, and 2 pickets. We used all the KB's/bugaboos, all the cams from 0.2-1, and a selection of the smaller stoppers at some point, and the pickets as the anchor at the top of the crux pitch exiting 2nd couloir. Approach Notes: Trail is well packed