Water

gavastik, i'm no skiing expert but i've slogged the southside a lot. I took the clusterfuckery picture and had my skis with me carried up from leutholds. if the chute was in good shape were were going to ski it, but it was still pretty firm and also torn up to shit by all the climbers. That said there are a few good spots 'nearly' at the top of the old chute but a little to the west where one can have a bit of a flat platform to put your skis on and be out of the way. From what I could tell it looked like the gully off the west crater rim (west side of crater rock) was now melted/exposed down to bare ground which otherwise i know to be a good ski down keeping clear of the hoards. If that is the case even if you donned your skis a bit out of the way, you'd have to be cutting back to the hogsback and dealing with at least some aspect of climbers if you wanted to stay on snow. that said with snow conditions, etc---yes most get an alpine start. you can generally bet on the trend that high freezing level + sun = ice and rock fall. However sometimes I can't make rhyme or reason of it. I've been up there on sunny days with high freezing level and it has been fine. Then up there on other days when things seem like they are falling apart and I wouldn't have expected that. I do think that as summer rolls around, once the rime comes off all the rock up there you really start to get a progressive increase in shit coming down. I don't think it would be unfeasible to go for the later start honestly. If anything it would weed out the hordes quite a bit and hopefully mean the snow is good for skiing. everything is a bet and a guess you just gotta play it for what you think and keep an eye on the conditions/temps. later start = better for skiing, but might be worse if your number one goal is to top out. enjoy

might be. but after going 2 for 3 on north over a few years, i think it is best (by that I mean..fastest) when it is dry and you can plan on no snow (no ice ax, no crampons). Later in the summer being better for that. but ive had fun both ways

it is a low snow year this year. things are melting. been warm and rainy. The traverse is probably still got some snow in june, but less than normal. and bowling alley will be clear. highly doubt the top be a solid block of ice in june with the weather patterns we've had thus far. also look into access--pole creek way is closed until opened by the FS due to fire last year.

has anyone heard anything back??

saw a report from a few weeks ago i thought. could be wrong. anyways as of end of april the FS said you could nearly drive to the TH...

ptown climber---i'd seen you mention looking at the spur earlier in the week and wondered--that idea tempted me. But then with the high freeze levels.. If it is any consolation I went over to the east slope of hood there and touched the snow a bit there near the summit. It was horribly wet and post-holy around 9am... not the case over on the west side--those 3hrs of sun did it in. Maybe it firmed up over night up higher like we saw above the hourglass but yeah, not sure you entirely missed out on that route at least--esp for descending would have been a real puckerfest.

sent an email on the sum'tec's and the mammut pack last night

Matt M/Water: Notes- to clarify the term 'ice tools', we mean just a 'second tool'. skinning was great up to Ill-saddle. Illupoopinsaddle has plenty of poop bombs around, so mind your feet and rope. Even with weather being what it was I left the parking lot in a tshirt all the way up palmer at 2am. Friday had been warm and Saturday was too, starting with the cloud cover and not much wind, esp on the West side of the mountain (contrary to forecasts). However the only movement of rock/ice I saw was tiny bits of snow/ice kicked by other climbers. Otherwise seems like the mountain has molted out of its winter shell and sent everything down. However there were clear signs even in just a moderate slope above the hourglass that wet slide activity had happened on Friday. I'm inclined to think Saturday afternoon would be the same, a pinwheel bowling alley, icefall, postholing mess? But in the AM things were calm, clear, and stable, even if it was above freezing. the hourglass area was a ton of fun, definitely the highlight of the day. a few fun moves also getting in and out of the ~5ft deep runnels that had vertical walls the reid traverse was in nasty shape with a 2inch~ breakable crust and rotten snow underneath, made for slow going. skinning this would have been better, but two in our group were sans skis. As Major Major said the debris fields were more compacted and easier to travel on. there are a few obvious bergschrund spots that are open and can be avoided but I think the debris fields have filled in other sections pretty well. If the weather lays down some more snow at say 9,000 and above maybe it would neaten things up, but, the mountain was starting to look pretty brown'tinged and gross. After we got down I felt like I wanted to say 'stick a fork in it', Hood is done (for me at least). Was happy to ski down but have definitely had better snow.. sticky, slow, tracked to hell. haven't been a barrage of hood pics in a while so I'll do the honors of recapping a lot of old hat: below the hour glass, wetslide runnels, nasty Illumination Rock and sun winding through the hourglass above the hourglass upper yocum ridge looking back down from near queens chair Cathedral Spire ice fall clusterfuckery drink up bitches!!! cocaine cookies:

Lincoln an idea for an investigative report might be to dig into the details of the private non-profit Mount St. Helens Institute siphoning off $65,000-85,000 each year in funds from the public to access a public resource, without providing a single service to climbers or skiers. Permit is $22 Forest service gets $15. They are also responsible for the mountain. $2 goes to the online system of the permit process and mailing the little piece of tyvek paper to you. $5 is a mandatory donation Mt. St. Helens Institute. (previous version of MSHI website have called it a donation, they have now scrubbed their site to call it a service fee). They make $65,000-85,000 a year off of this and provide no public accountability to how that money is specifically used. A total racket!

If you are wondering about cascade lakes hwy going past bachelor, I read that it was scheduled to open on Wednesday may 8th. So if that isn't indicative of a low snow year...get after it pronto! Late June will be too late.

woot woot! been a while since you had a TR up! thanks for the report

i'm guessing they'll do work in june? though if this weather continues late may if we're lucky? thats my guess but i don't have more info. could email klsandusky@fs.fed.us (Ken Sandusky) as he is the point person on the closure. likewise can you relay any info about pole creek opening up to us northerners? thanks

been pretty good... went up today. skied from the hogs at 11 or so.. SE slopes soft enough to be fun, S and SW still not quite there but plenty manageable. hope the weather holds for your arrival. few paragliders today as well, fun to watch. guy who came up cooper spur said it was great conditions, but descending at 9am things were already balling up a bit (removing crampons solved that).

Its in the next few days apparently.. this small system brushing the area is really swabbing hood good with clouds and wind. We went up much later than you probably. Crap vis, crap skiing mostly down low (pocket or two of o.k. stuff). Didn't expect much, just hoped for some breaks or a bit of burn off. Talked to someone who must have talked to you, re: worst navi from up high, really glad to use GPS for some help. Think a return on Tuesday...

hmm.. true. never got below 30 degrees at 7k all day today. 7 inches of new at 9k extrapolated for this evening, none tomorrow. judicious evaluation but possibly some excellent skiing higher. lee side climbing, not so great. come on now you've hit DKH in february in much more meager 'windows' by mon-tues-weds i bet east side is great, supportable crust in AM, corn in PM

sunday will be good. and the whole week looks great

suppose that is why runners are never very fit must be all the stationary weightlifting and yoga stretching they do. not the hours of cardio. come on now, I willingly defer that you probably have much more knowledge of human physiology but speaking in absolutes such as that cardio does nothing for fat loss is bull. maybe you mean 20 minutes a day cardio? or you're just going to say cardio at large? i had the least body fat of my life after walking 1800 miles.. exclusively cardio. wasn't the strongest I've been, but certainly the leanest.

probably doing all sorts of things wrong (frankly i'm impressed with the pack sizes you mentioned Mr. Shultz) but I like the mammut trion guide for a overnighter size. hear good things about the spindrift guide as well.. haven't had my hands on it.

Heya there Mr. Summit. Yes I went in there to tour I think late may 2012 and was met by a lot of lousy dusty blowdown crossing in ski boots from pole creek before we donned skins sometime after soap creek. 2011 was much kinder in the spring with snow going to the trailhead in early june I believe. From what I've seen on a few volcanoes around 6k and lower the snowpack is hurting and early as possible is going to be good. If you can manage to get in there that is [fire closure] Will have to look at access to middle and north from 242 which opens later and is longer i think.. booo. upside is i heard the pole creek fire burned intense so manybe when it does open the b-line from the trailhead to north is really direct last year skied south sister a week or so after the road opened (late june??) and it was car-to-car on skis but the ~2 miles of plains blows on the way down when you just want to be skiing and not putting on skins again. some scaled skis would be nice then for sure.

^ the above... so we verify but our actual usernames can stay the same? The first sentence 'policy change regarding usernames..." Or are you saying our posting username will turn to our full name?

at a distance a single black boot sticking up out of snow might just look like a rock. but if it has fluoro yellow or orange then it might get investigated.

bump. as far as material bummers go this is up there, sounds like a nice rig, feel for ya.

looking for someone who can sew some extra shit onto a backpack (hipbelt pocket...size zipper access..small open wand/picket flap under/below ski straps, is what i have in mind) will mail pack where needed but pref PDX area, SEA second. any recommendations? side note any custom pack makers to recommend (other than mchale?) thanks

cooper spur and some of the face to the west (climber right of cooper spur, climber left of NF gullies) has been skied. conceivably if u carried skis up the gullies u could ski cooper spur or snow dome, I think. but only for truly experts (the spur).

i use dual socks in climbing and hiking boots. thin liner that fits well (not bunched up at all) and a midweight sock atop that. Consider using athletic tape or some other burly type to tape your ankle well so that the friction is going the tap, not the skin. Not saying put a tiny piece of moleskin or a single strip of tape, but tape all the way around your ankle where you get the blister so that even with friction the tap isn't going to get pulled off. my wife does this on her heavier boots if she is planning on doing a long uphill day (like mt adams in the summer). also can use bodyglide or some waxy substance on your heel to reduce friction. I like the double sock and or tape idea, pretty cheap to try but you may need a better fitting boot.. you can get heel slip in many good fitting boots, depending on how they are laced and what type of motion.