Mt St Helens (WA)

Washington, US

Distance

9.3 mi

Mt St Helens (8365') is unusual in that it is basically a "new" mountain since the 1980 eruption which removed 1312' feet from its height. summitpost.org lists 3 main routes, Butte Camp, Worm Flows / Swift Glacier, and Monitor Ridge (shown on the map below). The latter 2 routes have attracted FKT activity.

You must go to the true summit to count! Just going to the crater rim isn't enough.

Another challenge on St Helens that has become popular is as follows: Starting from climbers bivouac, summit Mt. St. Helens via Monitor Ridge. Descend and run either clockwise or counterclockwise around the entire Loowit trail. Summit a second time via Monitor ridge and finish back at climbers bivouac. The initial idea was to get in a sunrise and then a sunset summit in one day, and the Loowit was the time to space out the two summits. It has been an informal quasi-event for a few years.

GPS Track

Mount_Saint_Helens_Monitor_Ridge.gpx938.78 KB

FKTs

Female

Unsupported
Sarah Burke			2h 25m 13s	2024-09-14
Tara Fraga			2h 39m 39s	2022-10-19

Male

Unsupported
Peter Innes, Patrick Fink			1h 37m 47s	2015-09-21

Male

Unsupported
Alex King	1h 13m 2s	2022-10-08
Peter Kesting	1h 13m 59s	2022-09-17
Jeret Gillingham	1h 14m 20s	2022-08-02
Alex King	1h 23m 10s	2020-08-29
Dan Kraft, Martin Mudry	1h 29m 0s	2014-07-26

Female

Unsupported
Sarah Burke	1h 34m 50s	2024-09-14
Tara Fraga	1h 36m 35s	2022-10-19
Pollee Brookings	2h 1m 51s	2022-10-13
Pollee Brookings	2h 11m 11s	2020-11-01
Deborah Glosser	2h 27m 26s	2019-08-13

Male

Unsupported
Eric Sauer			11h 22m 40s	2019-07-27

Female

Supported
Marta Fisher			20h 17m 17s	2022-08-14

Female

Unsupported
Brittany Haver			11h 57m 34s	2024-10-06
Ashly Winchester			13h 36m 51s	2021-08-07

This route on the old FKT site

http://fastestknowntime.proboards.com/thread/1164/mt-st-helens

Comments

Peter/Patrick,

Great speed run on St. Helens, although several years ago now. However, I reviewed your Strava data and the GPS clearly shows stopping at the volcano rim, and not breaking to the left, descending ~100' and making the final ~200 ft climb to the true summit. It's an extremely common thing to do, especially if it was foggy, like it looks like it was when you guys climbed.

I was wondering how you would like to handle this as far as future route attempts go. The route naturally should go all the way to the summit, and the extra segment from the rim to the summit adds ~8 minutes to the climb, and is the most technical part of the whole route.

Looking for general input in how to deal with this discrepancy.

Eric

Thanks for pointing this out. I agree the FKT should go to the true summit. Hopefully the next person will do so, while still beating the times of Peter & Patrick from the TH to the false summit, and from the false summit back down. Please take splits for those!

Tomorrow I am running the wormflow route from Marble Mtn Sno Park. If conditions permit I will attempt the unsupported FKT.

An update to this - I obviously did not get the FKT. From what I recall I was ~1m ahead of pace and 60-70% of the way up, but navigated off the route which crippled my chances. Some other time.

Is there any interest in a Monitor Ridge car-to-car rather than just ascent or do most just glissade down?

Route: Mt St Helens (WA)

FKTs

Comments