It was around 11 PM, we lost phone signals and were driving through windy dark roads. It was March and I hadn’t hiked properly in probably 5 to 6 months building a sweet soft layer of winter fat keeping me warm during the Seattle chilly rains. The last hike was a 16 mile day hike along the rolling hills on Nepal border via Tonglu and Tungling near Darjeeling. The last serious hike was last summer’s summit of Mt. Rainier via DC route. It has been a long time, since.

St. Helen’s on the other hand wasn’t a rolling hill — it’s one sweet stairway up and then down — at least in the winter. We reached the parking lot around midnight, set up some space and fell asleep in the car. It was a beautiful cold night with clear sky showing off the shiny stars - there were patches of snow around the trail-head and it was packed with RVs, colorful vans and other sleeper SUVs — amidst a pandemic. Everyone seemed asleep, no lights in the tents — we kinda preferred it that way, given that social distancing in the parking lot might be a hard one.

After a night’s worth of sleep — incomplete and shallow.. (realizing mid-sleep that one of the car window was open) we woke up at 4:30 AM, turned our headlamps on — picked up the permit at the trailhead and started the march! This was a relatively big trailhead — a short drive from the Climber’s Bevouac Trailhead sign.

Permits: we needed two permits — one for the car — Washington Sno-Park permit that we had to print and stick it on the car and the other one at the trailhead.

It was just past 5:30am when we started — the parking lot was already busy and car lights were mostly switched on. People making coffee and storing their tents — I had some really frozen left over pizza from Dominos that I had ordered the previous night.

The first couple of miles — was pitch dark. I’d love to have switched off my lamps but it was a mix of ice and crunchy snow — and it surely helped to know what I was stepping on. It wasn’t tiring — so I could tell we were not gaining a lot of elevation — the grade was hardly 5 degrees. As the sky was getting slightly brighter — it was peaceful to switch headlamps and look up to the sky. The shiny stars were starting to disappear, as we de-layered and gained some elevation. We stopped, to catch our breath and just look around — at the people, the disallowed (yes, No Dogs Allowed, but we found plenty) puppies running around, the endless snowfields, and of course — the silhouette showing the curves of the pine trees around in the first ray of the sunlight — with a purple backdrop, the stars experiencing the Schrodinger's phenomenon — at least in my head, the snow paths meandering through the scattered grove of trees.

The battle with myself begins — I feel like I’ve walked over an hour or so, but I knew if I checked my GPS I would have hardly covered ground :) but I like milestones and they motivate me to keep going. Maybe about 2–3miles and just over 1200ft — but the elevation was starting to pick up and I can feel the need to breathe deeply.

The meditation has begun! The only kind of meditation, I’m capable of.

By now, the sun’s out — it’s probably past 7 am and I turned back to actually realize there were a lot of people on the mountain that day. It’s the penultimate weekend before the lottery-permit season begins and it’s a perfect weather window. I must admit, I’ve attempted to make the trip to Mt. St. Helen’s a couple of times before — but the weather was so unpredictable that it was a no-bueno the night before and we had to cancel it.

But this weekend — this was it!