June 9, 2011, Mount Saint Helens

Voyaged with Duncan in his nice Westphalia and my son Sam for his first backcountry ski trip.  Misty on Wed evening but the stars came out and the weather on Thur was beautiful.  My first time up Worm flows.  Perhaps 1/2 mile total of booting; other than that still continuously skiable.  Despite the recent cooling portionos of the the lower and upper mountain were still slushy.  We observed skiers and hikers setting off huge hisser slides, and there were signficant glide cracks everywhere.  At the area around 5300 there was a short carryover of a lava ridge to remain on the marked route, but we elected to stay in the gully to the east: not the best move, but OK, resulting in a ~300 ft bootout up steep soft snow.  Sam and I also had to de-ski and boot up soft steep snow on one segment about 7200' and so to the summit.  Not the easiest terrain for a first time kick turner.  A little windy on the way up but then the weather turned perfect.  We skied down about 1 PM in shirt sleeves.  The snow was much better than I expected: soft in places but no crust.  What a fantastic long fall line.  I think it is a better run than the summer route.  As mentioned before here the woodsy exit below treeline was really really fun with a perfect downhill gradient for skiing moderately down the trail.  After some final hiking we were back.  A few pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/koelle/