Mt Shasta

Justin and I stopped in Sacramento on the way back up from Yosemite for the Saturday finals at the IRA and to pick Will Gustafson (Guff) up. Our plan was to camp at the trailhead Saturday night, camp at Helen Lake Sunday night, and get back up to Corvallis Monday night in time for Guff to take a final on Tuesday morning.

We stopped in the bustling metropolis of Mount Shasta City to do some laundry, get dinner, buy some groceries, and for Justin and Guff to waste 40 dollars each renting snowshoes that wouldn’t make it more than ¼ mile from the trailhead. It should also be noted that they played around with the idea of renting avalanche beacons because there had been 4 inches of snow a few days previous. Needless to say, I am glad for their wallets sake that they forgot those.

We made our way up to the trailhead and after a few beers and some spirited intellectual discussion we setup camp. When we arrived around 10 pm we saw some guy sleeping on the ground next to his car. We think he started hiking around 1 and by the time we woke up and started to break down camp in the morning he was on his way back to his car, having hiked all the way up and skied back down before 10 am. We felt lame.

We started hiking from the Bunny Flat Trailhead (~ 7,600 feet) around noon, with the goal being to make it to Helen Lake (at 10,500 feet) in time to setup camp and make dinner before it got dark. About a quarter of a mile past the trailhead, Guff asked some people coming down if the snowshoes were necessary. They assured him that he would not need them and he ran them back down to the car while Justin and I proceeded.

We stopped at Horse Camp, a Sierra Club lodge (at 8,500 feet) momentarily to let Guff catch up. While we were there we talked to the caretaker who said that someone up higher had fallen and they were trying to get a helicopter in to airlift them out. It was super windy on Sunday and it took them four tries to get the helicopter low enough to drop a hoist that the rangers could get the injured person in. After talking to more people coming down we found out that he had been glissading with his crampons on, his crampons caught the snow, and he compound fractured his tibia and fibula (11,500 feet). The ranger had to get him down to Helen Lake where the helicopter would more easily be able to swoop in to pick him up.

We slogged up the next 2000 feet through intermittent fog. It made the hike really drag on because there was absolutely no sense of progress. Finally around 10,000 feet we broke out of the fog and could finally see where we were headed. We met the ranger who had helped the injured party earlier; he was cruising down and proclaimed it “Miller Time”. He also mentioned to be sure to anchor our tents well, explaining that the previous night several tents had been blown off the mountain.

We arrived at Helen Lake by mid afternoon and tried to find the most suitable spot to make camp. Part of the beauty of snow camping is that you can make whatever you need. In this case, the night before tons of people had dug shelters into the snow wall below Helen Lake and we were more than happy to take over an abandoned one. Of course because we had great shelter there wasn’t a breath of wind. There were four other tents up there Sunday night. Two of them were not attempting the summit the next day and two were.

We built a snow kitchen, cooked dinner, and were asleep by 9 pm. We woke at 3 am to start our summit attempt. The moon was up and we had a great view through the night down the mountain and into the nothingness that surrounds Shasta. We made good progress up for the first 1000 vertical feet without crampons. When the slope steepened we decided it was time to put crampons on. Unfortunately, Justin decided it was also time to drop a Nalgene bottle and his climbing helmet.

After this mishap Guff and I pressed on and Justin waited for someone else to bring his helmet back up. As we passed people going up we asked them when and where they had started, the answers got earlier and earlier with the majority of people starting from Horse Camp between 2 am and 11:30 pm. We climbed up through the Red Banks (12,500 feet) just after sunrise. There was a cloud layer covering the valley and the reflected colors as the sun rose were pretty phenomenal. On Shasta once you get past the Red Banks you change directions and proceed up “Misery Hill” over a series of false summits before you get to the final relatively flat stretch before the summit. Guff and I weren’t feeling so miserable, but other people were definitely feeling the effects of altitude.

We charged up with another small group and summited around 9 am. It was remarkably warm and calm on the summit so we took advantage of that and hung out for a half hour while we snapped some pictures and I changed into the snowboarding gear I had lugged up the hill.

On my way down a hundred feet or so from the summit I saw Justin coming up. He made really good time considering how long he had to wait for his helmet. I told him I would wait for him at the top of Misery Hill and continued snowboarding down. Now I needed to wait for the snow to soften up to be able to have a fun ride down, and I wanted to walk down the top part of Misery Hill because there was not a lot of snow cover over some sharp rocks, so I really didn’t mind waiting for Justin. In fact, I decided this would be a nice spot for a nap, so I laid out my snowboard and napped in the sun at 13,500 feet for about an hour while I waited for him. Best nap of my life.

Once he got back down to me we continued back down Misery Hill until I got to the point where I felt comfortable with the rockiness. The snow was still really firm so I powerslid (the high-speed equivalent of sideslipping) down through the rest of the sketchy parts. At this point I traversed right, over to the top of “The Heart”. I however missed the headwall by about 20 feet and really didn’t feel like hiking back up over some exposed rock ridges in snowboard boots without crampons. The only other option was to drop into one of the chutes in the Red Banks. Let’s just say I feel much more comfortable on sketchy terrain with a snowboard on, than carrying a snowboard. I bombed through the top chute in the Red Banks and flew out into the open bowl named “The Heart”. The snow was just soft enough that I could hold an edge but otherwise was very unpleasant to ride on. I sliced a few huge arching turns down through the heart, narrowly avoiding rocks several times. The bowl was pretty moderately pitched (~30 degrees) with not much in the way of danger below it so I flew down – loosing control a couple times and sliding out before I could get an edge to dig back in. As I got back down towards Helen Lake the snow started to soften up more and became reasonably fun.

I got back down to camp in about 5 minutes just in time to see Guff taking a nap in the tent, naked, with the tent doors open. Interesting. We hung out in the sauna that was Helen Lake for about an hour while we waited for Justin to get down. The clouds were rolling in and out of the basin that Helen Lake sits in and with the sun baking the clouds it was 70 or 80 degrees with 100% humidity, completely unpleasant.
When Justin got down to camp we packed up the tents and loaded as much as possible onto my backpack because I was snowboarding down and didn’t need to carry it for as long. I took off and bombed down towards Horse Camp. As I got farther down the snow quality rapidly deteriorated. By the time I got to horse camp I was exhausted from trying to shred the foot deep boot holes and suncups. But the whole trip, which took us 4 hours to get up, took 6 minutes to get down. I hung out at horse camp for a few minutes and asked the caretaker what the best route down on a snowboard was. She said there was a gully that usually held snow pretty well but she hadn’t been over there in a few weeks and had no idea how it was holding up. I traversed over there and was pleasantly surprised how much snow there was. It got progressively sketchier for the next couple miles until it was just not worth it to try and snowboard anymore. I unstrapped and made my way back to the main trail. A quarter-mile later I was back in the parking lot. I hung out in the parking lot for an hour or so until Wagner and Guff got back down. We packed up the car and headed back to Corvallis.