Early in the sickening, wet morning of May 10, my group and I, now overflowing with fatigue like a neglected bathtub, schlep all around the barren, frigid cabin floor.  Not a single word escapes a single mouth.  In exciting, terrifying silence we prepare ourselves as if we’re guilty convicts waiting outside the execution chamber.  Everyone amasses the necessary equipment and we drive away in that eerie, anticipating noiselessness.  Long hushed moments pass as the car flies up the mountain, slicing around curves with the intense, focused skill of a NASCAR driver.  As the fog parts, thick as half-frozen milk, the car rolls to its destination: Marble Mountain Sno-Park.  The long anticipated climb is to begin.

Pair after pair of boots and trekking poles hit the ground.  The air seems as if it is about to freeze and fall right out of the sky.  Heads turn and face the white space in the sky where the rim of the grand Mt St Helens should be, but is instead masked by the ominous impenetrable mass of fog.  With gear meticulously assembled, we come together for a picture and then take a deep breath, face the fog, and start off on the trail.  A lot is to happen in between that moment and the next time we see that parking lot. 

Not a half mile up the trail, we start onto the gleaming snow.  Still surrounded by grandiose pines, we wind through the forest, ever climbing.  At this point of the hike, everyone’s mind is clear and jovial.  We’re having more fun than we ought to, running around in the snow and sliding on patches of pristine ice.  After a mile or so of this, it gets old, so we settle back into simple walking.  Almost at once, the trees begin to be found shorter and shorter and eventually, every trace of them ceases to show itself.  The terrain at this point has drastically changed.  Snow on dirt turns to large boulders. 

Challenge #1: It is unimaginably steep.  Never before in my life have I been so grateful for my two tiny trekking poles.  Coupling the force exerted by my arms with that of my legs, I claw my way up the mountain on a couple patches of fresh synthetic leather and two tiny metal points.  Unfortunately, to add to all of this, it does not appear to ever lighten up on the steepness.  If anything, it’s only going to get more precipitous.

 
Challenge #2: The boulders.  As one might imagine, a field of boulders does not exactly create a smooth surface to climb on.  Moreover, the trail soon climbs atop a ridge and begins to follow it to the summit.  This narrows the trail immensely and now hikers are assembled in a single file line, dragging themselves up the ridge.  The thickness of the fog and the sheerness of the sides of the ridge make it feel as if the trail is the only thing to walk on for as far as the eye can see.  The tiny sliver of jumbled rock stretches out like an old wrinkled finger, up until it is engulfed by the very density of the fog. 

Challenge #3: Loss of the mind.  Not only is this climb extremely arduous, but it is agonizingly monotonous.  The fog makes it impossible to see much from the face of the volcano, and the cadence of feet and poles moving up the mountain is mind-numbingly ostentatious.  Boot, boot.  Poles.  Boot, boot.  Poles.  Boot, boot.  Poles.  This of course will not halt itself until my eyes can peer into the crater of this grand beast, and so it continues; step after step, pole after pole, thousands of times over.

I soon find myself off the ridge and onto an icy glacier as I drudgingly drag my half-unwilling, half-determined body up the slope.  I have no clue how long I was on that ridge because all I visualize from that experience is: “Boot, boot.  Poles.”  I don’t know why I’m expecting otherwise, but that rhythm does everything but stop once I reach the glacier.  I obviously can’t speak for every human conscience but when I am hiking, my mind tends to wander to other topics to occupy my mind during the exhaustingly long task.  This trek was substantially different.  My mind, irrevocably flooded with “Boot, boot.  Poles.” cannot seem to settle on any particular topic whatsoever.  Those three words, “Boot, boot.  Poles.” continue in my mind for hours and hours on end.  It could go for years and my mind would still not snap out of its grasp.  I am hopelessly hypnotized by the painful unchangingness of the climb.  Now, looking back on the memory, all those moments seem like a blur, but in the moment they seemed to extend beyond the furthest extent of the tentacles of eternity.  “Boot, boot.  Poles.”

Eventually separated from my group, I’m left to my own devices and self-motivation, placing my steps directly in those of the scores of people who have summited before me.  I notice that even those footprints of skilled trail blazers become less and less regular and eventually completely lose all sense of continuity.  They too were being influenced by the drudgery of “Boot, boot.  Poles.”

As I climb towards the rim of the crater, I can feel it.  Honestly, it’s probably just my desire to be done with the ascent, but I think it’s safe to say at this point that I am feeling the checkpoint coming.  The fog soon forfeits a small portion of it’s secrecy to reveal a treasure among treasures.  Groups of people are sitting down in the snow, gear sprawled out on the ground.  I have half an urge to make sure they’re all still breathing.  My eyes glance up after hours of downward gazing.  I search among circle after circle of hikers, searching for my comrades who were fortunately capable of finishing the ascent quicker than I.  Finding them, I move the final few yards, impetuously drop my gear into the snow and collapse into the cold snow.  My sweat-covered, burning skin welcomes the refreshing snow.  After that excruciating experience, I am convinced nothing will make me move from that very spot on the cornice of the crater. 

I just lay there amidst my friends, eating the most delicious granola bar I have ever tasted.  After hours of massive energy expenditure, a little granola bar is comparable to a three course meal.  It takes about forty-five minutes for the rest of our group to complete the summit, but compared to the lengthy climb I have just finished, it’s quite negligible.  They too, collapse down on the snow and take full advantage of their God-given moment of rest.  In the midst of passing fog banks, one can glimpse momentary views of Mt Adams’ grandeur and that of other majestic peaks along the Cascades.

Now as we are all indescribably grateful that we all made it to the top in one piece, we all understand that we’re not quite done.  We still have to make the return trip back down the face of the volcano.  Slightly disappointed at the lack of a helicopter we turn our backs on the culmination of one of the hardest things any of us have ever done and begin the descent. 

Clearly much easier than the way back up, the trip down is a lot more mentally engaging as well.  Instead of thinking “Boot, boot.  Poles.” we get to glissade down the mountain.  We sit down in the snow, push ourselves off, and away we go down the mountain, at much faster speeds than those going in the opposite direction.  At one point it becomes so steep that when my feet get caught on a mound of snow, I find myself doing cartwheels down the side of a snow covered volcano.  As it levels out after several yards, I clumsily reestablish my feet in their normal position: under me. 

The path we end up taking back down the mountain is slightly different than the one we took up the mountain.  The ridge that the trail follows up the mountain is not conducive for glissading and so we decided to follow the ravine directly to the east of it.  The ravine appears to follow right along with the ridge and with the fog clearing up now, we’re sure we won’t get lost at all. 

Continuing to glissade down the mountain, we get creative.  One of our group members comes up with the ingenious idea to run up the side of the ravine, roll a soccer-ball sized snowball down, and see just how enormous it can get.  Each one (yes this becomes commonplace all the way down the mountain) grows and grows until it has amassed enough snow to form a fast moving wheel of snow about five feet wide.  Everyone steers clear of its path of destruction and understandably so.

 
As the day progresses forward, the half-frozen milk that was the fog melts and clears up to gift us with clear blue skies and magnificent views of the rolling hills and other mountains that dot the landscape.  Unfortunately enough, this extra sunlight provides, in turn, for more heat.  Not exactly cooperating well with heat, the snow becomes much softer and by the time we are walking off the mountain we find ourselves trudging through thigh deep slush.  Any attempts anyone made to stay dry have been rendered futile.  Everyone without exception is soaked to the bone below the middle of the thigh. 

Eventually, of course, our out-of-the-way path rejoins with the main trail and we begin hiking our way back to the cars.  As we return to the welcoming shade of the tall pines, the physical exhaustion of the day starts to affect the body slowly at first, like an unforeseen terminal illness.  In many ways it feels like we have the symptoms of one too.  My mind is in shambles after all the mind-numbing “Boot, boot.  Poles.”  We pass many campers set up along the trail and I am solidly convinced that I look like a poor drunk soul walking along the trail.  I can’t seem to walk straight because my legs refuse to work together.  Also, my arms are at my side, trekking poles hanging from them, dragging pitifully in the mud behind my feet.  This drudgery continues for a couple of long undesirable miles before I arrive at the Marble Mountain Sno-Park. 

I could walk out of hell itself to see the glorious light of all things lovely and I still won’t be feeling as relieved as I do when I arrive at the sno-park.  Asphalt has never looked so beautiful.  Or soft.  Once I make it to the cars I take off my waterlogged boots, peel off my discolored socks, and ring them out, creating a small greenish-brown colored puddle that smells like seven week-old roadkill.  I no sooner than accomplish that unpleasant task than I lay down on the hard black asphalt, lay my baseball cap over my eyes, and take a short, very necessary nap.

All this over, we return home and back to normal life.  Well, most of us.  Many of the group suffered the pains that come from the underuse of sunscreen on a very bright white mountain, which are terrible sunburns on every part of the body that was not covered.  One friend got burned so badly on his lips that talking hurt him too much so he just remained silent.  Another, forgetting to wear sunglasses on the blinding mountain, had his eyes swollen shut for the next several days.  We will all recover and resume comfortable living, but none of us will forget.

Climbing that mountain undoubtedly ranks as one of the absolutely most difficult things I have ever accomplished and I assure you that the same goes for many of my comrades who climbed it with me.  It threatened to destroy us not just physically, but also mentally.  Through it all, we continued to put one foot in front of the other and persevered to accomplish the task we were all presented with, one foot at a time.

Boot.

Boot.

Poles.