Mount St. Helens

My friend, Liz, and I used to laugh about how there was a big difference between someone who was outdoorsy and someone who was sporty. She spent her weekends in the mountains hiking, rock climbing, camping, etc. I spent mine playing 7 or 8 games of ultimate, showering, eating way too much at Olive Garden, and sleeping in a bed. Like I said in an earlier post…I’ve just never been a huge “outdoorsy” person.

So Avery called me a few months ago and asked if I wanted to “hike” Mount St. Helens with him, his friend Andy(by far Avery’s craziest friend, he lives for doing dangerous, flat out dumb things), and Andy’s mystery friend. He also said it could take up to 12 hours. To an outdoorsy person I’m sure that sounded like an awesome adventure. To me it sounded miserable, but for some reason I immediately said “yeah, of course.” I knew this trip was a time for me to step out of my comfort zone, and trust me the thought of this hike made me leap out of my comfort zone.

Needless to say, it was an experience like no other. Luckily we found out the normal time it took was actually only 6-9 hours, which made it feel like a much less daunting task. The first 45 mins to an hour was an easy stroll through the trees with patches of snow around us. I was thinking, “I got this shit.” However, once the trees broke we opened up to this gorgeous snow covered vertical climb. Seriously though, it became much less a hike and much more of snow/sand/rock climbing. To give you a better idea, there is an elevation change of 4500 feet on this 4.5 mile hike. AND the first 2 miles were an easy stroll. That’s a lot of feet with very little mileage. Oh, and did I mention that non-outdoorsy Lindsay was wearing old jeans and thrift store nike tennis shoes? Genius, right? The people we passed probably thought I was an idiot. They were all prepared with their hiking poles and crap.

Andy probably could’ve made it all the way to the summit in two and a half hours. If it weren’t for Andy’s mystery friend, Melissa, I don’t think I ever would’ve made it. However, after 4 hours, 100 bullet prayers, 500 thought cuss words, a feast of sandwiches, carrots, dried mangoes, and baked cheetos, a wonderfully distracting conversation with Melissa, and 4500 grueling feet we finally made it to the top. After Melissa walked right past the red warning flags out of excitement, we made our way to the side where we were able to look into the heart of the volcano. Unbelievable. There was steam coming out in various places, a beautiful lake right behind the crater, and Mount Ranier in the background. Words and pictures don’t even get close to giving it justice. It was truly breathtaking. We spent about 30 minutes giggling like little girls and taking an absurd amount of pictures. Then it hit me. How the hell are we going to get down this mountain? Melissa and I were hoping for a hot air balloon to come pick us up.

This is actually where the fun really began. After struggling to walk carefully down the snow-covered decline, Andy began leaping like Mario down the mountain. He seriously looked like a cartoon, but he was able to stay on his feet and moved down at a very rapid pace. Melissa, Avery, and I were not convinced we could move at such ease. However, we came across an even better way to get down the snow. Melissa slipped and fell and happened to slide a good distance down. That seemed much easier than my timid small steps/slides. I wrapped my rain jacket around my waist and just sat down… I literally flew down the mountain. Avery only had to save me from crashing into rocks once...

What took us three hours to climb only took one to descend. It was incredible!