Perry’s partner Sophie and I had been floating the idea of climbing and skiing Helens for a few weeks before our plans finally solidified around Saturday, April 2nd. We quickly added Sophie’s friend Lindsay to our numbers, and eventually, my sister Bridget agreed to join in as well, with all of us planning on meeting at Marble Mountain Sno-Park on Friday night.
I informed Sophie and Lindsay that they’d be able to spot us in Bridget’s giant white Ford F150, and by 11:30 pm they had found me trying to figure out how to turn the lights off in the cab of the truck. We agreed on a 4 a.m. wake-up time before I ended up lying mostly sleepless on the platform bed in the back of the truck, listening to rain hit the topper, and hoping that things would get less miserable in the morning.
4 a.m. saw my hopes largely answered, as the rain was gone, and it wasn’t too cold out. We were slow to leave the truck, especially due to Bridget realizing her avalanche backpack was barely going to hold all the essentials for the day. But eventually, we made our way out onto the trail and started the skin up.
We passed numerous groups on the way up the wide road-like trail, stopping only once to leukotape a hot spot on Bridget’s foot. We left the trees to find ourselves in the early morning glow. The sky was still overcast, but we could make out the line of climbers ahead of us, many of whom started to boot up the steeper slopes.
There were a lot of firsts on the way up. Bridget got to use crampons for the first time, after deciding that the ski crampons she’d borrowed from her housemate weren’t enough traction; and I got to skin up a significant amount of the mountain with ski crampons on, only packing the skis up in a few places where the steeps made my kick turns feel extra spicy.
As we got midway up the mountain we entered the conga line of climbers, some of whom knew Lindsay. The sky cleared up above us, but we could see the top of the cloud cover stretching out like a blanket, pierced here and there by Rainier, Adams, and Hood.
By the time we reached the top there were about twenty climbers eating snacks, taking photos, and procrastinating from transitioning into ski mode. We did more or less the same, being sure to get some shots of the steaming chasm below the rim. No one felt particularly inclined to move to the true summit, a few hundred feet away, and so we fiddled around removing skins and stomping into bindings before starting the ski down.
The first third of the mountain was all hardpack, and Bridget and I again split off to go chase powder stashes on the way down. Eventually, we found ourselves with a large bowl splitting us from Lindsay and Sophie, and after skiing to the bottom, I did my best to point them to the least steep place to enter.
As we regrouped we reached the warmer slushier snow, which made for some decent turns as we reached the bottom of the volcano. A climber gave us directions on navigating through the ridges of rock, and we navigated back to the same trail we took up. Only a few pushes were necessary on the long gentle slide back to our cars.
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