Mt Shasta

This weekend we (George, Brian, Paul and I) went up to Northern California to climb Mt Shasta. Shasta is a beautiful mountain, one of the southerly volcanoes in the Cascade range. At 14,162 ft it is also one of the higher mountains in the lower 48.

We were climbing the Avalanche Gulch route and there are two common ways of doing this – one is to pack in quite a long way up to Helen’s Lake at 10,000 ft and overnight there before going up to the summit. The other is to pack in a short way to the Sierra Club hut at Horse Camp at 7,800 ft and then do a lengthier ascent to the summit from there. So the trade off is the distance you have to carry a heavy pack up the hill to camp at Helen’s Lake, versus the length of your ascent on the summit. Acclimatization also comes into it to as you have a longer time to adjust to altitude if you stay overnight at Helen’s Lake. We were divided - Brian and Paul started out Thursday and went up to Helen’s Lake, while George and I went in to Horse Camp on Friday (the thought of carrying a heavy pack all the way up the hill was too much hard work for me).

There is another of advantage of taking the Horse Camp route in that it makes for a shorter overall trip and when you have to pack out everything from the mountain, and I mean absolutely everything, then shorter is better. If you want to know just how you pack out everything then check out this link.

So it was an early start on Saturday morning - a very early start. We were on the trail by 1:00 am under the light of a full moon. The idea was to get up the hill before the sun turned the snow to mush making it too hard to climb and before it loosened too many rocks to come tumbling down on our heads. The going was pretty good, though going uphill at that altitude is never really very easy. We arrived at Helen’s Lake around 5:00 am, joined Brian and Paul and started out on the hardest bit of the climb – up from Helen’s Lake to a band of rocks called Red Banks – Red Banks because they are… brown, well at least a reddish brown anyway.

The full moon and the view down the hill just as the sun was rising.

Approaching the bottom of Red Banks as the sun was rising.

Looking down towards Helen's Lake and from where we came from the top of Red Banks.

The sun had just risen by the time we poked our heads out of Red Banks and I was pretty exhausted. Still once past Red Banks the worst is over and it was on up to the summit up something called Misery Hill. Misery Hill is very aptly named, it’s a slog up to a false summit through very loose scree, and it is nothing other than shear misery. Once you reach the top you can then see the real summit and that gives you the inspiration to carry on that little bit further. We reached the top around 10:30 after 9 ½ hours of uphill grind.

On the summit!

The way down is of course much easier and when the snow conditions are right, as they were, you can just sit down and slide down the hill. When a few people do it over the same course, tubes form in the snow and it is like shooting down a giant slide. Allegedly you stay in control using your ice axe but sometimes I was going so fast, I wonder how in control I was. Whatever it was certainly a fun way down.

For me I was then afflicted by some nausea, fatigue, headache thing that I can only attribute to the altitude. I just felt really bad for a while and just wanted to curly up and sleep (which I did when I got to Helen’s Lake) but then it disappeared when I went further down the hill. Everything except the fatigue that is – I was pretty exhausted after what turned out to be a total of 17 hours out on the trail.

Yours truly after it was all over.

It was fun, but it was really hard work. For the second time in my life, I resolved to never ever do that again. I have been up the summit of Shasta three times now, I think that’s enough.

The March of the Penguins

I went to see a very nice film this weekend – The March of the Penguins - it is a wonderful film about Emperor Penguins and their long treks over the Antarctic ice to procreate. The story of these wonderful animals is amazing and it is told with equally amazing photography.

The penguin’s story is so heroic - the long trek across the ice in single file to the place they were born, the finding of a mate, the protection of the egg and then the chick from the cold, and the long treks back to the sea to get food. The really amazing bit is the male’s role in keeping the eggs protected from the cold by huddling together in a group with the eggs balanced on their feet while storms rage around them. They keep this up without food for much of the Antarctic winter while the females go off to find food.

You cannot help but anthropomorphize these animals; they suffer all kinds of hardships and deprivations in one of the most hostile environments. They struggle through all this with great resolve, a little humor (at least it appears so to us humans), a lot of love and often some sadness and at the end of it all there is a cute little penguin covered in downy feathers.

Highly recommended to anyone.

Who makes these lists...

I was dismayed to learn that yet again another moderate Muslim was refused entry to the U.S. yesterday. His name was on a list of inadmissible persons. Sheikh Dr. Zaki Badawi, who has a honorary knighthood in the U.K., who was even invited to a State dinner for George Bush by Queen Elizabeth, who just last week stood up and condemned terrorism, was yesterday prevented from entering the U.S.

Last year it was Cat Stevens, or Yusuf Islam as he is now known, who was refused entry, now Dr. Badawi. What message does this send to Muslims everywhere, when their moderate leaders are being denied access.

A little motorcycle ride...

Some great motorcycle roads this weekend – Highway 128 from Winters over to the Napa Valley, Skaggs Spring Road from Geyserville on 101 over to the Coast, Highway 1 south on the Coast to Bodega and finally the Oakville Grade Road from Sonoma Valley over to the Napa Valley. Some of the best scenery in California and really good fun to ride. My favorite bit was the Skaggs Spring Road which I had never been on before.

Again I was struck with how nice the area around Sebastopol is – a great climate, none of Sacramento’s heat, quite rural and yet still close enough to San Francisco and all the city things. And, unfortunately, I was again struck with how unremarkable Sacramento is. I never seem to come back to Sacramento and think – what a beautiful place Sacramento is. Certainly it has it’s good points and certainly it is my home but it is not scenic, it is not spectacular in any way, and it pales at the side of the country I saw at the weekend, and, above everything else, way above everything else, at this time of year, it is too damed hot (way over 100 degrees today).

Oh the shame...

Last Friday, I happened upon the chance to ride in a Hummer Limo. I had been invited to a friend’s (actually more a friend of a friend’s) art gallery opening. We met at the artist’s house in Sacramento and then to everyone’s surprise this huge Hummer Limo arrived to take everyone to the gallery (it was a surprise gift for the artist). This thing had to be seen to be believed – a stretched version of a Hummer, that most tasteful and economical of all vehicles (and most despised too) with an interior décor right out of a third-rate Reno Casino.

So we all rode to Davis in this machine and it emptied us out into the streets of downtown Davis – now Davis to those who don’t know is the most liberal and “green” community in the area and this is saying something. So it is decidedly un-cool to arrive in Davis in such a vehicle. Whatever – it was a pretty fun ride, and something worth doing just once. Oh and the art was pretty good too.

The Entente Cordiale suffers another blow...

French President Jacques Chirac dealt another blow to Anglo-French cooperation today when he was overheard saying to Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin a couple of humourous things about the British.

"One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad..."

"The only thing they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease..."

"After Finland, it is the country with the worst food..."

Pretty funny for a President, apparently Vladimir and Gerhard were rolling with laughter. I think if I were Finnish I would be really upset.