Mount St. Helens

A climbing permit for Mount St. Helens on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, near Amboy, Washington, administered by the USDA Forest Service. The photographs are taken on the mountain itself. The upper route climbs over loose grey rubble and boulder fields with no trees on it, and in several frames the climbers are above a solid deck of white cloud, the snow-covered cone of another volcano standing clear of it on the far horizon. Other views show the slope under snow: a long line of walkers on a boot-packed track with forested hills and distant peaks below, and small firs plastered with rime on an open snowfield under low orange sun. From the top the ground falls away into the crater. Its rim is a broken edge of ash-grey and rust-banded rock cut by chutes and gullies of pale debris, cloud lying in the bowl below, with people standing on the narrow ridge of pumice at the lip.