Portland: The Mt. St. Helens Adventure Tour

Spend a full day crawling, climbing, and hiking with your professional guide as you experience Oregon's natural surroundings up close.

Travel north of Portland along the lower Columbia River, known for 18th-century Spanish, American, and British explorers, and the Chinookan people. Crawl through a lava tree mold during a 20-minute hike in a landscape reminiscent of a fairy-tale amusement park, before beginning your descent into Ape Cave, one of the longest continuous lava tubes in North America. Spend 1-2.5 hours exploring this cave, named for a purported Sasquatch attack.

Weather permitting, you will spend an hour at the closest viewpoint into the crater of the volcano, where you will eat a picnic lunch, overlooking Spirit Lake. Here, if there are no clouds, walk up the 437-step staircase to get a photo of Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. Rainier, and of course, Mt. St. Helens. Before returning to Portland, you'll make additional 5-to-30-minute stops to enjoy vistas, hike through oldgrowth forest, and admire a waterfall.

Throughout the day you'll learn about the geological history that shaped Mt. St. Helens and the Cascadia region.