My wife and I volunteered to help with the Volcanic 50K on Saturday at Butte Camp. It had been a few years since we climbed Mt St Helens, so we decided that would be a fun add on to the trip. I searched for alternative routes to Monitor Ridge and found a few references to an ascent from Butte Camp.
The weather was cold, overcast, and windy when we started at 6:30am. There isn't an established route, so we just picked our way through loose rocks and hard-pack snow. Since it never warmed up, crampons would have been nice to take advantage of the snow fields. The route wasn't extremely difficult, but it was challenging trying to avoid steep, loose sections. We arived at the summit just around 9:30am and it was really windy. I made a few quick contacts and then started our descent.
