St Helens ski now?

[PeterF]

Is St Helens any good for skiing now? I want to run up it next monday and was wondering if I should bother bringing skis. I am enough of a ski bum to haul the skis up for only a short ski, but not if it there are no continuous patches of snow.

[jbhalladay]

We ascended Monitor Ridge last Friday, 6/04/04, and had some great snowboard turns down from the true summit of the crater rim. Definitely worth taking the skis. With a couple of stops to very short hikes (2 minutes or so) over rock ridges on the descent we were able to ride all the way down to treeline. Nice spring corn riding for sure.

 

Here's a shot of our turns from the summit:

[PeterF]

It was mostly slush when I did it last monday. From the summit to 7k was solid, but below that was 2+ ft of slush. It might have been a function of the recent weather, but compared to other stuff I have done it was a pretty absurd amount of slush the whole way down.