Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Mark on his way up Mt. St. Helens...notice it's a gradual climb. We weren't sure exactly what the conditions would be so we hauled up our ice axes and crampons only to have day hikers wiz by us in shorts and t-shirts and tennis shoes :).

Jess at the summit. I know it looks like snow goes up higher than I'm standing, but the edge of the crater has huge cornices of snow [snow that curves over the edges of the actual lip]. Obviously you don't want to walk out on that b/c it's not stable and will probably one day fall into the crater. If you look a couple pics down, you can kind of see some of the cornices on the crater rim.

A view of the glacier that rings the lava dome down inside the crater. Wierd to think a glacier could form inside a volcano huh?


Looking down into the crater.

A view of the outer crater.


3 comments:

keith said...

Fantastic picture story! I hope to see some of these sights someday. Gigantic glaciers...

keith said...

ps. really proud of you three for the climb. I'm sure it was no walk in the park:)

Burton Webb said...

Way to go you guys! It's nice to see that some alumns aren't just sitting around doing nothing.

Great story and photos.