Mt St. Helen's North

We headed up to Mt. St. Helen's for the 4th of July weekend, it was only a 2 1/2 hour drive away- we had no idea. We camped at a place called Sunset Falls which is one of my favorite campsites to date. We drove to it hoping to get one of the first come first serve campsites and I was so nervous, but Yay we got one. We couldn't see anyone from our site, we had a private trail down to the waterfall and got to fall asleep to it.

 

The first day we did Harry's Trail which is an 8 mile hike through the north part of Mt. St. Helen's It's the part with the crater that blew off when it erupted. This side of the mountain had barren rolling landscape with lava rocks and wildflowers. There were a few trees but most were gone.

We could have sat in on an educational video on it and then I'd be able to tell you more but there were too many people around so we headed out on a trail away from all of them instead :)

We saw Spirit Lake which is full! of logs and the prettiest blue also in the distance you can see Mt. Adams, we got lucky it was such a clear day.

 

Finally at the top we were looking right into it's crater. It was crazy windy at the top but whenever the wind stopped you started sweating- hard to pick which we preferred.

To the left of St. Helen's you can kind of see off in the distance Mt. Hood (it was easier to see in person)

One part of the hike led us along a ridge with a steep drop off down into rocks. It wasn't unsafe but it was a little startling at times. We kept telling each other to lean in and pick up your feet, ha. But we made it over and back just fine.

The hike and mountain were beautiful. We were quite tired after being in the sun throughout the whole hike though. We're not used to not having trees for some shade relief! (Don't worry parents we wore sunscreen)

 

That night we used Joshua's gift from my parents- a cast iron sandwich toaster, to make pizzas.
I'm pretty sure hands down this is our favorite camping food. We loaded em up with tons of goodies.
And of course, as usual, I burned the first one.

This is the waterfall that was near our campsite. It worked really well drowning out the sound of the people at the next campsite, we took a sunset walk along the creek one night. Made me feel like a little kid crawling all over the rocks.

 

Next up South side...