Alex_Mineev Posted April 18, 2003 Share Posted April 18, 2003 Weather: snowstorm, whiteout. Roundtrip time: 6 and 1/2 hours. 3 and a half hours driving from Seattle. Got climbing permit, the lady at registration told me about wet snow on the mountain the day before and said that she would probably take snowshoes in my place and there is no need for crampons. Another 30 minutes to sno-park where I found about 15 cars. Sh.t! I forgot about sno-park permit. When I left sno-park for the permit the last party of two skiers were locking their car and heading up the trail to Worm Flows. 40 minutes of crazy driving back and forth for the permit and I also hit the trail. I was the last one to leave the parking lot following snowshoes, boots and skies traces. In an hour I completed the in-forest part of the route, put on snowshoes and met two guys going down. In another 20 minutes I caught up with the two skiers left the parking 40 minutes before me. Rain turned to snow. We've entered clouds. Visibility degraded to 300ft rapidly closing to whiteout. Approximately at 5600ft I passed the last team ahead of me - 4 guys who were breaking trail I guess from the very start. Couple times I discussed direction with them. Navigation seemed Ok while some stones were visible on snow. Real problems began when I passed the stones and there was nothing around but the snow and a gray disc of sun that occasionally appeared above and a little behind me. Once in each 5-6 minutes whiteout was getting thinner and I could see the line of the nearby ridge. At approx 6500ft whiteout became so solid that I had to start using compass. In 20 minutes the slope became steeper and I checked a hard icy crust under a foot of snow. Temperature was below 30 and the snow seemed stable enough. I stopped to pack poles and prepare ice axe. The last 20-30 minutes of my way up were classical ascend with ice axe on 35 degree slope. Finally I've reached the point where only 5 inches of snow powder covered hard crust and slope became 40 degrees or so. After I slipped and arrested first time I turned east and tried to walk around the slope. It was a wild guess because of whiteout at approx 7000ft. In a couple minutes I slipped/arrested again. I dug two holes to fix my feet, set down, checked the crust again and thought that even if I had taken crampons and altimeter I should give up ascending. Two reasons came to my mind: 1. it is absolutely possible to miss the cornices on the top in whiteout; 2. if sun breaks thru - avalanche danger on this slope may substantially increase during minutes. So I drank some water with ice and started descent. I returned back to the point where I started walk around the slope and after twenty steps down I lost my traces and searched them by making left/right 60 degree turns. I found only a few deep holes left from ice axe. This was the last time I saw any traces. Compass. Not very useful either because each time you stop watching the needle you immediately loose direction. Luckily in 40 minutes of descent I heard voices of the group that followed me, they were also descending at the moment when I reached them. Guys used wands that provided fast and easy descend to safer terrain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juneriver Posted April 18, 2003 Share Posted April 18, 2003 This is a good reminder that even though St Helen is non-technical, it can get tricky. It's a big mountain. The only time I've ever been in a mind-altering whiteout was on St. Helens. When we couldn't see more than 10 ft ahead and the whole mountain was covered in a couple inches of rime ice, we too thought we might walk right off the cornice and turned around near the top. The whiteout was so disorienting that we tried to take compass readings off of large rocks in the distance, only to take a few steps and find out that those were small rocks 10 ft ahead of us. We literally ended up on our hands and knees crawling around to look for axe holes in the ice to find the way down. A good arguement for wands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braumeister Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 Good post--glad you made it back down without serious incident. Would be a good one to post on the Newbie page... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iain Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 nothing worse than skiing off a 10 ft drift w/o realizing it, or skiing straight into a 10 ft drift, both of which I accomplished on one ski descent. I sometimes like to carry a few small pebbles w/ me to roll down the slope if the snow conditions allow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skyclimb Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 GPS GPS GPS GPS. The key to navigation. SImply track you original route, only turning the GPS on every hour or so. Then on the return, track back, and white out or not your good. Good adition to the normal compass routine. However it does require batteries. What happens if these run out?? BIG BALLS, and back up compass! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timcb Posted May 1, 2003 Share Posted May 1, 2003 Sort of on the same note, what's the easiest ski descent on st helens this time of year? I'm planning on heading down there this weekend (5/4) for the first time, and I've read from the GPNF site that the climber's bivy trailhead is plowed through and open. Should I head up Monitor Ridge or stick with worm flows? for that matter, how difficult of a ski is it? how much harder than descending from camp muir? Other notes/thoughts on gear/current conditions would all be much appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.