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.