Climbing Mount St. Helens

When you need a permit, and when you do not

A permit is required to go above 4,800 feet on Mount St. Helens. Between April and October that permit is quota-controlled and costs money. From November through March there is no quota: you fill in a free self-issued permit at the trailhead register and go.

That winter window is the part most people never find out about, and it is not a consolation prize. Climbing the mountain on snow, by the Worm Flows route from the Marble Mountain Sno-Park, is a better outing than the summer scramble for a lot of people. It needs winter skills, an ice axe, crampons and avalanche awareness, and the weather turns the day into a serious proposition rather than a walk. But there is no permit race, no quota and no fee.

How the summer release works

This is not a lottery. Permits for a given month go on sale at 7:00 AM Pacific on the 1st of the month before, on recreation.gov, and they are gone on a first-come basis. Popular summer Saturdays can disappear within a few minutes.

What that means practically:

• Have a recreation.gov account, already logged in, with a payment method saved, before 7:00 AM Pacific.
• Know your exact date and group size in advance. Deciding at the checkout screen is how people lose permits.
• Have a second and third acceptable date ready. If your Saturday is gone, the Tuesday two days later is often still there.
• Set an alarm for the day, not just the time. It is the 1st of the preceding month, so a September climb goes on sale on 1 August.

Midweek dates and the early and late ends of the season are dramatically easier. If you can climb on a Wednesday in late September rather than a Saturday in August, you may not need to race at all.

The Monitor Ridge route

The standard summer route starts from Climbers Bivouac and runs roughly ten miles round trip with about 4,500 feet of gain to a summit at 8,365 feet. There is no technical climbing, but calling it a hike undersells it.

The first couple of miles are pleasant forest trail. Then the trail ends and the route crosses a long boulder field marked by wooden posts, which is slow, awkward, ankle-turning ground that most people find harder going down than up. Above the boulders the final stretch is loose volcanic ash and pumice, the kind of surface where you slide back half a step for every step up.

Budget eight to eleven hours. Bring far more water than the distance suggests, because there is none on the route and the exposed upper mountain is hot and windless in summer. Gloves are worth having for the boulder field, and gaiters keep the ash out of your boots on the descent.

The crater rim is the point

The summit is not a peak so much as the rim of what the 1980 eruption left behind. You look down into the crater at the growing lava dome and the glacier that has formed around it, with Rainier, Adams and Hood standing on the horizon. The rim is corniced and unstable, and people have fallen through overhanging snow into the crater. Stay back from the edge, and do not walk out onto anything that overhangs.

Pair it with the bigger mountain: Mount Rainier National Park Itinerary: 3 Days at Paradise and Sunrise. Day by day, with where to sleep and what to book.

Getting there

Portland is the nearest airport, around ninety minutes to Cougar, Washington, the last town with fuel and food on the south side. Climbers Bivouac is reached by Forest Road 81-830 from there, and the last stretch is rough enough that all-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive is recommended. Check current road conditions before committing a low car to it.

Cougar is small. Book a bed early for a summer weekend, or plan to camp at Climbers Bivouac itself, which is what most people do for an early start.