Loowit Falls: 9.7-Mile Sunrise Hike at Mount St. Helens

I’ve known Mount St. Helens most of my life without ever setting foot on it. This morning I finally did, after two and a half hours of dark road and fog, one familiar turn not taken, and a headlamp walk across ground that looked nothing like the green forests I usually hike. The closest I had come before was Kalama Falls, south of the mountain, on its quieter side. This time I came from the north, where the trail to Loowit Falls crosses a wide plain of light gray volcanic rock below the open crater. Very little here hides. The ground is bare, the mountain is broken open, and the scars of 1980 are still easy to read. I went looking for the beauty in it, not sure what I would find.

Loowit Falls

The drive gave me time to think about a text exchange from earlier in the week, and about how even the people I know well can still surprise me. I learned an unexpected lesson from a longtime friend, and the way she did it is what I carried down the highway. Then the trail took over. I watched the sunrise from the opposite direction, with my back to the sun, and saw what the first light does to a mountain that lost its top. Out on the plain, life was coming back in small, stubborn ways.

Sun shining through a young fir in the blast zone at Mount St. Helens

Along the way, I carried a question from home that felt both old and new at the same time. Some parts of my life keep going with no one watching over them. Others stop the moment I look away. This season handed me an example I couldn’t argue with, along with a borrowed word I’d been using in more ways than one. By the time I reached the falls, I had the beginning of an answer, though not all of it.

Dawn glow over the blast zone below Windy Ridge at Mount St. Helens

The Journey…

My playlist ended as I pulled into Windy Ridge, and in the silence that followed, I realized I hadn’t seen another car in an hour and a half. There was no moon, the stars were the brightest I’d seen in years, and for a place called Windy Ridge, there wasn’t a breath of wind. I laced my boots and started down the closed service road by headlamp. This was my first time at Mount St. Helens, though I’d been carrying it with me since I was a kid. I remember the day it erupted the way I remember 9/11. Some mornings don’t fade. A short side trail looked down toward Spirit Lake, only a dark void at that hour. When something moved beside the road, my mind ran from bear to elk to deer to squirrel in about three seconds, until a bird flew out of the tree.

Narrow ridge on the Abraham Trail at Mount St. Helens before sunrise

Past the shoulder of the ledge, about two miles in, the mountain came into full view. I followed the Abraham Trail up a narrow ridge that put me right between the sunrise and the mountain. It seemed like a good place to park it for the morning. An elk called from off to the west, coyotes answered, and across the canyon, five white dots on the hillside turned out to be mountain goats, probably waiting for the sunrise too. Then the light reached the top of the crater, the huge open bowl the eruption blew out of the mountain’s north side. The fresh dusting of snow up there turned pink and orange while I stood in the cold blue shade. That was when the wind finally showed up to earn the ridge its name, and it felt like it took ten degrees with it.

Sunrise lighting the clouds over Mount Adams, seen from Mount St. Helens

From there the trail dipped in and out of one ravine after another, each with a small creek at the bottom. Every time I climbed out and turned north, Spirit Lake was there with Mount Rainier rising above it, the lake still holding its raft of logs from 1980. Now and then a single Indian paintbrush stood out bright red-orange against the gray, the only color up there. Near the last ravine, a nanny goat and her kid turned their heads to follow me as I passed, and I couldn’t help wondering what they made of me. Then Loowit Falls came into view, spilling out of the crater with the mountain peeking up behind it, through rock in every shade of gray, black, red, and rust. On the way back, the miles I’d walked in the dark were mostly blue sky.

Mountain goat nanny and her kid on volcanic rock at Mount St. Helens

Gratitude…

I pulled out of my driveway at 3:20 AM and headed south on Highway 161 toward Elbe. Most mornings, this road carries me through Ashford to Mount Rainier. This time I turned at Elbe and kept going south, past Mineral and Morton, then east on Highway 12 through Randle toward Mount St. Helens. One turn, worlds apart. The towns were dark, the fog came and went in patches thick enough to slow me down, and my playlist kept me company. In those early miles, my thoughts returned to a few text messages exchanged with a longtime friend earlier in the week. It started with a trail I was considering for the weekend and wandered the way our exchanges sometimes do, fun comments back and forth and a couple of photos of my grandson. Along the way, I mentioned work, expecting to hear about the classroom I had pictured her in for years. I was wrong.

Snow-dusted Mount St. Helens in blue light before sunrise

About ten years ago, she had shifted the focus of her work and life, and somehow I had missed it. I felt that little drop in my stomach, the discomfort of realizing I hadn’t been paying attention as well as I thought. Embarrassment, maybe even a little shame, would have been a fair description, but humbling felt closer to the truth, because of what came next. She didn’t make anything of it. No awkward silence, no “you didn’t know?” She simply filled me in, as naturally as she had shared everything else. That was the gift: allowing me to catch up without making me feel behind. As I drove through the dark, I found myself grateful for that grace. Grace like that is easy to miss, because it asks for nothing back.

Spirit Lake and its floating log raft from 1980, with Mount Rainier beyond

The exchange stayed with me because it reminded me how easily familiarity can get in the way of curiosity. With someone new, it’s natural to ask questions and listen closely. With the people who have been part of my life for years, it’s easy to assume I already know their story. But people keep changing, even when the parts of them we love remain the same. My friend had moved from caring for other people’s children to caring for the people closest to her. The work had changed, but the heart behind it hadn’t. Between Randle and the mountain, I thought about how much I still had to learn about the people I thought I knew well. I was grateful she had shown me without making a lesson of it. And I hope I remember it the next time someone misses something about me, something important, and offer them the same grace I was given.

Mountain goat below the snow-dusted crater wall of Mount St. Helens

Reflections…

I picked up a word from Eckhart Tolle a while back, and I’ve ended up using it two ways. He writes about the watcher, the part of us that can notice our own thoughts without judging them. I still lean on it that way, as I did at Colchuck Lake. But in my version, the watcher also became the part of me that keeps track of what should be done. Mine carries a checklist of shoulds. It knows when the gym is on the list, what belongs on my plate, which chores are waiting, and how long the guitar has been tucked away in its case. When I took my first steps onto the road toward the Loowit Falls Trail this morning, this concept of the watcher became my trail-thought, or more honestly, what happens when it goes off duty. I didn’t have to look far for an example. At the end of summer, my watcher took a vacation. Literally.

Ravine carved by mudflows below the snowy summit of Mount St. Helens

When I left for Ireland in August, the gym stopped, the meals changed, and the Guinness flowed, which in all fairness is what Ireland is for. I don’t regret a pint of it, but I might have regretted a few. What surprised me came when I returned home. The watcher didn’t return with me, or if it did, it stayed on Irish time. For the next month the daily things drifted, and it wasn’t until this week that they found their rhythm again. But through all of it, I didn’t miss a single hike. The Cliffs of Moher, Howth, and Ballinesker while I was still overseas, then Crystal Lakes, Maple Pass, Sunrise Rim, and Naches Peak once I was home. No checklist needed. Each week I picked up a blank canvas, went hiking, wrote about it, and I didn’t have to think twice about it. Actually, I didn’t have to think about it at all.

Two mountain goats watching a hiker from beside the Loowit Trail

The contrast puzzled me on the climb. I’ll get up at 3 AM to stand on a mountain at sunrise without a second thought, while the gym can sit and watch the clock run out on an entire day. Part of the difference is what a missed week costs. The few times I’ve missed a hike, I felt it in the week that followed: unsettled, distracted, a little off, and sometimes down. The trail brings me back to center, a balance where life comes into perspective and the gratitude is more than a thought. It’s felt. The other stuff pays off too, just on a longer clock. The gym and the plate give me health, fitness, and comfort in my clothes. The guitar gives me a song, and if I’m brave, vocals alongside. A clean house brings a little peace and calm. All of it matters, but none of it arrives each week, finished.

Morning sun on the ridges below the crater of Mount St. Helens

Then I thought about how a week is built. The best part of mine typically begins on a Thursday with a blank canvas. Each week, by design, I don’t know where I’ll hike, what I’ll be grateful for on the drive, or what the trail will give me to think about. But I still trust that before the weekend is up, there will be a finished piece: a trail walked, views seen, gratitude felt, and a reflection worked out in my journal. Then it gets tucked away like a time capsule and I’ll pull out another blank canvas at the end of the next week. My own weekly Groundhog Day. Back on the trail, there’s nothing for my watcher to do, because there’s no should to check. I’m just present. This morning, near the falls overlook, it struck me that this is the watcher Tolle talked about, and out here it’s the only one I need. The shoulds in my life are daily. They have no beginning and no end, only a clock.

Trail through golden grass in the Mount St. Helens blast zone

I’ve always liked fresh starts. For years, the trouble was that mine came only after a habit broke: a missed gym visit, a guitar left in its case. Then I’d wait for a Monday or the first of the month to begin again, and I’ve told that story here before. I’ve gotten better. The gaps are smaller, I rarely wait for the next marker, and I’ve stopped saying “I’ve got to get back to…” because I cringe when I hear my own voice say it. These days I’m either doing it, or I’m not. On the way down, the thought settled into something I hadn’t expected. Maybe I never needed fewer fresh starts. I just needed ones that did not begin with something broken. The trail gives me one every week. I do not know yet what the next canvas will bring, but I know it will not be a should. The path continues.

-Ken