I used one of my last vacation days to go hiking with Aaron Millstein and Daniel Kolta, who are clerks at the WA Supreme Court (where I also work). Kolta planned a hike in the olympics, but the rain looked bad so we headed south to St. Helens instead. Lucky me. I had tried (and failed) to convince Shelby to go to St. Helens the previous week. I hiked around St. Helens with Einar a couple of years ago, but we had bad weather so we didn't get to see all the views. I thought there was only one really pretty section of the trail and the rest was kind of boring. Turns out I was wrong. The whole thing is pretty nice when you can actually see it.
The first day was really foggy. We hiked in a few miles to a campsite but couldn't see a thing because of fog. Here is my trusty solo tent in the fog at our first night's campsite.
Here's the "view" from the foggy campsite.
And here's that same view the next morning. It is nicer:
Aaron and Kolta pack up their tent:
Once we got going the weather was pretty nice. Here is the north side of st helens with a view of spirit lake. Nothing grows on this side after the lava flow. Just some grass here and there. It looks like the moon.
Kolta at Windy Pass:
More north side. It's pretty:
Spirit Lake:
Here's a river we had to take off our shoes and walk across. It was about 3 inches deep.
Okay so the next pictures are where we start to wrap around to the west side. When I was here before it was fogged in, so it was nice to see the scenery. We went up and over a bunch of ridges:
This is right before descending to the Toutle River camping area. I like this picture a lot. Nice high country created by lava flow:
And here's St. Helens. Funny, I never saw any of this view the first time I was here:
We camped in a pretty meadow near the Toutle River. When we woke up in the morning, it was foggy. I took about a million pictures of my tent because I liked the color of the meadow so much. You can see my little camping area with my stove and pack and everything:
This is the Toutle River, with fog:
This is me that morning
My set-up in the meadow:
We had a big climb out of the Toutle River. I had to do it solo since Aaron and Kolta took off early. At the top I met a british guy right as the fog was clearing. Here is what that looked like:
This was much later in the day. We walked by this thing that looked like a river of snow or a glacier or something. Pretty cool:
Trail shot:
On night 3 we ended up back at our night 1 camp site. That was pretty cool. It's a really nice campsite so we were happy to be back. The views were much nicer the second time around since there was a lot less fog. Here's Aaron:
A picture of the ridge from our campsite:
On the way out we hiked along this cool ridge and got great views even though there was a little bit of fog. Overall, the weather was pretty good and we stayed dry. This ridge was fun to hike along:
Overall, a great trip. It was really cool to see St. Helens again and to get up and out in the high country even though so much of it elsewhere is still snowed in.
Wow! Fantastic trip! I especially like the shots of hiking on the ridge and your meadow camp.
ReplyDeleteThat is a nice meadow color, indeed.
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