Saint Helens,
August,
2003
Here are some pictures of a trip up Saint Helens I took with some friends back in 2003. The mountain has been pretty popular lately so I thought I would add these great shots. Featured here, as well as the mountain, is Jonathan Lim an engineer from Penang, Malaysia. He now lives in Vancouver BC. My friend and hiking companion Dave and his wife Cheryl joined us as well. You will see Dave in lots of other hikes and backpack trips throughout this website.
The above picture is the dome inside the crater in 2003. The scale is hard to tell here so let me put this in perspective. On one of the first climbs up this mountain I reached the rim and looked at this dome (it was even smaller then) and heard a helicopter flying around inside the rim. I looked and looked and could not see the helicopter. I thought it was hidden out of sight on the other side of the dome. Actually it was over a mile away flying along right in front of me but was so small it was difficult to discern. Since this picture was taken the mountain has began to re-grow this dome shifting it closer to the rim on the right of the photo.
Looking north from the rim you can see Mount Ranier over 100 miles away. Notice the new Spirit Lake off to the right. There is still a good amount of logs and debris at the far side of the lake, 23 years after the eruption. This is looking out to the right of the 1980 "blast zone," a giant desolation pointing NE toward Yakima Washington.
Click on the blue hypertext for more pictures. Warning! I did not scale the pictures down to be as small for this web page so I hope you have lots of RAM. Hit the back button on your browser after you have viewed the pictures.
Here's Dave and Cheryl fresh and happy at the trailhead.
A nice picture representative of the 2 mile hike through the woods before the actual climb begins.
Here's Dave ducking in the shelter of some stacked pumice boulders .
Here Cheryl starts a minor landslide. Note: Those snow fields in the background are a very long ways away. This is a very steep section of the climb .
Here we are sitting on a section of the horse shoe shaped rim looking across at some of the more jagged section of the rim crumbling down into the dome area .
Having some lunch at our destination .
Another shot of the dome .
Some more of the rim crumbling away .
Here's a shot of yours truly with the air above Portland Oregon as a background .
Looking west at some other hikers on the rim above us .
Taking a little nap . Mount Adams in the background.
Resting on a snow field on the way back down .