Feb 1, 2009, Mt. St. Helens south side, icy

Took the normal route up to about 4500', then skinned up the main gulley east of the boot pack on the ridge to about 5650'.  The sun was out, the weather was great.  The snow was getting nicer and nicer.  Then about 1:00 the high clouds came in and the snow started to freeze up again.  This was my first use of ski crampons.  They worked great.  I felt comfortable traversing out of the gulley on a 40deg (measured, not my poor estimation) slope.  My partners didn't have ski crampons, so skinning didn't work for them above about 5000'.  I mounted my mantras that I was using for lift skiing with dynafits saturday night, and was happy I did.  It was fun for me skiing the icy slopes, but my friends on light weight flexy stuff were not having fun until the snow softened at around 4500', approximately where the good slopes ended.  All in all, it was a great day with pretty good weather and nice to be outside.  And we mostly had the mountain to ourselves, maybe due to the superbowl, or maybe other people knew it was going to be really icy.

Snow stability at 5300' on a south facing 20deg slope was excellent.  The snow was too hard to dig enough for stability tests...  maybe everyone already knows that though...  Is that helpful information?  The ridges are pretty bare, especially the west facing aspects.  The trail had plenty of coverage all the way to the snowpark, although one skier we talked with mentioned there is less snow than is normally here in early spring.  I'll attach a couple of pictures that show coverage.