Скачать или смотреть The Loowit trail loop - Breathtaking views from the hike around Mt St Helens!

A video compiled of about 70 photos taken while backpacking the Loowit trail around Mount St. Helens.
This is not a technical description of the trail or the hike itself, but rather a showcase of the breathtaking, stunning views of the landscape around the volcano, especially the restricted blast zone on the north side.
There is a trip report for this hike on the NW Sisu website:
http://nwsisu.com/stories/hiking/loow...

Music: "Forever", by Fesliyan Studios https://www.fesliyanstudios.com

All the photos (not the map screen-captures) were taken with a LG G7 camera phone.

A more detailed description of the hike:

Based on our time frame, not heading out until Friday afternoon, and wanting to be back on Sunday, we decided to do a 2-nighter, starting at the June Lake trailhead, and hike counter-clockwise. We would camp the first night before Windy Pass, and the second night at either the East Fork of Toutle River, or further east, depending on our progress.

So we started at the June Lake trail head, hiked up to June Lake. From there we continued another quarter mile up to the Loowit trail intersection, and headed east on the Loowit trail. The ripe huckleberries along the trail slowed us down somewhat, but their delicious taste was worth it!

Eventually we got out of the woods, and into boulder fields. Some areas had a good trail, but in other areas there were no path, and we had to do boulder hopping, looking for wooden posts and cairns, marking the trail.
Most of the time we had great views of the nearby Mt Adams.
We left the boulder fields behind, heading more northward, into a sandier area, with sparse vegetation, crossing a few small dry creek beds.
The first stream we encountered had silty water. We figured there should be clearer water further up, so we continued without filling up. But the next creek with a supposed water source was dry, except for puddles in the rocks, left by the previous days rain.

We filled our water containers with the filtered water from the puddles, and continued north. We reached the Pumice Butte about 6pm and went off-trail to set up camp on one of the hills.

We got up at 6am, had breakfast, and hit the trail at 7am. We hiked the Plains of Abraham, up to Windy Pass. The trail up to and over the pass was narrow, but not too narrow, and took us up along a steep hillside. One of my buddies told: Don’t look back! So, I looked back. The steep hillside looked little freaky. The trail was solid and felt safe, though, so I wasn’t worried. This spot is one of the reasons this hike is not recommended for people afraid of heights.
We reached the top of the pass, and were met by a stunning view of the restricted area to the north, and continued down the trail into the blast zone.
We soon ran into several creeks with water. We stopped at one of the for a lunch break, and to fill up on water.
We made a side trip up to the Loowit falls, but it was foggy in the morning, and we weren’t able to get a good view of the falls. We did get great close up view of a herd of mountain goats.
The Spirit Lake, on the north side of the trail, was a beautiful sight!
We weren’t able to see much of the crater due to the clouds. Although clear skies would have provided the best views, the clouds did keep the weather cooler, which made the hike more pleasant.

Eventually we reached the west side and started heading south, converging with the East Fork of the Toutle River. At some point, the trail started switch-backing down to the river. The river banks were quite tall, but there were fixed ropes to assist in climbing down to the river bed.
There were several people camping down at the river, this spot being the most popular camp site on the Loowit trail.
It was still early, so we filled up on all our water, and continued the long steep climb on the east side up to Crescent Ridge. For me, this was the hardest part of the whole loop. It was steady uphill for 1.6 miles, until the terrain started leveling out. We set up camp at about 7pm, and enjoyed the evening with dinner and campfire.
Next morning, we got up at 5am, ate breakfast, and hit the trail for our final section, back to the June Lake trail head.
We passed several boulder fields. They didn’t seem to be as difficult as I had anticipated. But this section is the least water-source friendly section on the loop. We were hoping to run into water sources before Chocolate Falls, bet there were none. By the time we reached the falls, we were out of water. We took a break, skipped lunch, and filled up enough water to comfortably make it back to the June Lake trail head.
We reached the trail-head around 1pm, less than 48 hours after we started there.