Mt Shasta - 3rd Time's the Charm

[lizolas]

Mt Shasta, June 23-24, 2018

Several months ago, I signed up for an F5 event to climb Mt Shasta via Casaval Ridge. I had another Shasta trip planned via Avalanche Gulch in May and figured I’d do it by the easy route first, then a harder (or at least slightly more technical) route a month later. As it turned out, in May we had terrible weather and didn’t get anywhere near the summit. The Casaval Ridge plan changed to Avalanche Gulch after a couple of Corneliu’s friends told him they did the ridge earlier in the week and found that the catwalk was melted out and there was a section with a steep ice traverse. Corneliu (and probably Aaron and Ian) wouldn’t have found this insurmountable. The other 5 of us without as much technical experience were not up to that, nor did we have the gear for it. I was expecting to be the group member with the least amount of experience, but several of the people who RSVP’d “going” didn’t end up going and a couple others came along who had no prior mountaineering experience, putting me solidly in the middle of the pack.

In my typical fashion, I originally planned to leave Thursday after work, drive through Lassen and do some acclimation hikes on Friday, then continue to Shasta Friday evening. I was also supposed to have someone to drive with, but have not yet learned my lesson about other people’s RSVPs often meaning “I’d be somewhat interested in the idea of this” rather than “barring something seriously preventing me from attending, I’m going to be there.” I messaged him on Monday, heard nothing, tried again Wednesday, then resigned myself to driving alone and paying for gas alone. He at least had the courtesy to, on Friday morning, post in the group announcing that he wouldn’t be there because he was needed at work…. Anyway, back to my lack of time management; I was, of course, not packed on Wednesday evening, and Thursday I decided to go climbing instead of leaving ASAP. Since the plan for Shasta was to camp and acclimate overnight, I decided the detour through Lassen probably wasn’t worth it, plus it would necessitate buying a Parks Pass. Another $80 on top of $150 for gas and $25 for a summit pass didn’t seem so appealing. I eventually headed out at 11 on Friday morning, severely underestimated traffic that early in the day, and arrived at Bunny Flat at 7 pm.

Shasta from the trailhead

Shortly before Corneliu arrived, two young men approached us and asked if we knew where the Rangers were. They had apparently gotten their truck stuck taking a dirt road recommended by Google Maps, and couldn’t get it dislodged from a rock on a steep hill. Corneliu helped pull them out once he arrived.

Saturday morning we had a leisurely start and headed up the trail just before 10. I thought we were taking the trail, but instead we took a cross-country “shortcut” that bypassed Horse Camp. What it cut off in distance, it seemed to add in routefinding and difficulty walking. We rejoined the trail on the section of dusty switchbacks that had been entirely under snow a month prior. Within half a mile or so, we arrived at the snow covering the remainder of the path to Helen Lake and stopped for a lunch break.

”This is a normal human position”

The weekend prior, Ben and I met Nolan in Tuolumne and saw him both days we were there, then I ran into him again on Shasta.

The short snowy section wasn’t steep enough to require crampons which was nice. The group split into two parties at this point. Corneliu, Ian, and I went at a pace that was moderate enough to maintain for a while without stopping. The others went only a bit slower than our pace on average, but stopped frequently for breaks. I’ve realized recently that I never look at my watch when I’m wearing long sleeves, but I think it was about 3 or 3:30 when we arrived at the lake. Once at Helen Lake, we found adjacent spots where our 3 tents would fit. The 2- and 3-person tents just barely fit in one larger spot and the 4-person got its own spot. Nobody in our group had brought a shovel – everyone who knew enough to know we’d need one assumed that someone else was bringing one – so we had to borrow a shovel from our neighbors to level the sites a bit more.

By 5:30 we had the tents set up and were debating napping vs. dinner time. I think we should have started dinner earlier and actually gone to bed earlier. I had every intention of eating a huge dinner, but the Backpacker’s Pantry meal I brought didn’t taste good enough to finish the whole thing (with 250% of the daily recommended amount of fiber, which is just what you want on a backpacking trip!). Before we returned the borrowed shovel, several members of our group filled stuff sacks with clean snow to melt for water. Ian and I filled two and melted most of it into water for ourselves and the people in the tent next to ours before going to bed, so we’d have the water already done in the morning. I also packed what I was going to want in my 18L daypack for the summit to make sure everything would fit and I didn’t have to take the 65L up with me.

Casaval Ridge at sunset

We started going to bed about 8:30, having discussed a midnight wakeup time to allow plenty of time to reach the summit even at a slower pace. By the time we were actually getting to sleep, it was well after 9. Nobody slept very much or very well. The wind made it hard to fall asleep, and I woke up again at 11:25 – not really enough time to fall asleep again before the alarms went off. Midnight came far too soon and while the adjacent tent immediately jumped to start preparations, we stayed in bed a little longer, ate a cold breakfast, and put the final things in our packs for the day. The funny thing about picking the wrong day of the month to do something is that when you try again exactly 4 weeks later, it’s still the wrong day of the month. At least I found out in the morning before we left?

The group set off at about 1:45, then split up a bit. Ryan was leading the line going at a fairly quick pace with frequent breaks. Aaron was elsewhere, and Corneliu was somewhere behind us which seemed unusual. After one particularly long break, Ian and I decided to wait a bit longer. Definitely to see if our other group members turned up, not at all because we were finding that the bursts of speed alternating with long rests wasn’t the type of rhythm we liked. A lone headlamp came along, and it turned out it was Corneliu – the lack of sleep had really gotten to him, and he was feeling quite sick. We joined him in a line of Ian at the front finding a path, Corneliu in the middle, and me at the back because I wanted to make sure we didn’t accidentally leave him behind if he felt worse and slowed way down or stopped.

I’ve decided that as inconvenient as they are to remove, refill, and replace in a pack, Camelbaks are really superior to water bottles. Hydration is more efficient when it’s smaller quantities more frequently, which water bottles just don’t allow you to do in a time-efficient manner. We stopped several times for sitting-down breaks, and at each break Ian or I asked if Corneliu wanted water since he just had a bottle in his pack (it’s nice when the people you’re nagging about hydration don’t actually require nagging to agree with you), but that was still fairly infrequent drinking.

During this portion of the hike, we started getting pelted by ice blowing down the mountain in gusts of wind which prompted me to add my fleece layer over my Smartwool baselayer. I began to worry that the day would end up just like the previous attempt, and wondered if I should leave Ian and Corneliu and head up alone to try to catch up with the rest of the group. At that point I wasn’t sure if Corneliu was feeling well enough to want to try to summit, and having already summited, Ian seemed not terribly enthusiastic about having gotten up at midnight to do it again. I was pretty sure if anything went wrong and they needed to turn back, one person to accompany him back to camp would be plenty. Ian said he was still planning on going for the summit unless Corneliu wanted to turn around, though, and he didn’t seem to be getting any worse, so I stayed with them. When we’d started, the moon was illuminating the mountain such that headlamps were almost unnecessary. By this point, the moon had set and the only visibility we had was what our headlamps gave us, making me less excited about the prospect of going off alone anyway.

The main thing I think I accomplished on this trip was more trust in my feet on snow. Ian was taking a line that was less following someone else’s track of kicked-in steps next to the glissade path, and more a zig-zagging traverse that’s kind of how you’re actually supposed to climb mountains. At first I felt like I was going to fall, then I decided if both people in front of me were doing this with little difficulty I should learn to believe that my feet would do it too. Shockingly, it worked, and there weren’t any spots that I was actually unstable.

Left to my own devices, I would have just used the universal beta (“go up”) to navigate the portion of the hike from Helen Lake to Red Banks. It turns out that much more sophisticated devices exist, though; Corneliu and Ian both had GPS watches that allowed us to track our elevation and monitor how close we were to the top of that section. We reached the top minutes before 5 am, passing between Thumb Rock and Red Banks. There we found the rest of our group waiting for us – they’d gotten there about half an hour before we did. We stopped for an extended break with lots of sunrise photography, then continued on toward Misery Hill.

I can understand why it was named, with the way the climb is a series of sections that either don’t let you see the summit or show you a false summit, but I thought Misery Hill was downright pleasant compared to the steep climbing in the dark we’d just been doing. Now we got a gorgeous panoramic sunrise view and lower-angle hiking. The views from Shasta are so different from what you get in the Sierra, since everything for miles around is at least 10,000 feet lower. Large swaths of conglomerate along the sides of the snowy trail were really interesting to look at, so of course I forgot to take any pictures. The texture looks like it should be a pile of loose gravel, but it’s solid rock (relatively solid, anyway). We’d heard from other climbers that it was all scree above Red Banks, but there was snow almost the whole way, with some short sections totaling a few hundred feet of sand and scree. I saw a couple parties taking off their crampons to walk up the conglomerate slabs rather than over the snow which seemed inefficient given that you quite obviously have to put them back on a short while later for the rest of the hike. Despite the sun coming up, I kept adding layers as we ascended, and by the summit plateau I was wearing everything I’d brought except my Gore-tex shell. With the slower pace and frequent stops, I wasn’t overheating like I would have expected.

Thumb Rock

We waited at the top of Misery Hill for the whole group to assemble before continuing across the summit plateau. The flat section was a nice break before the final bit of climbing. Although I was feeling generally awful, I wasn’t having as much trouble breathing and moving at 14,000 feet as I’d expected to have. This was probably due to a combination of having made a few high elevation trips recently as well as resting with the group a lot more than I would rest on my own.

That is a big darn shadow

The summit block was a lot closer than I initially thought; in other news, I’m terrible at gauging vertical distance or estimating how long it will take to climb a given section. We all assembled at the top of the final switchbacks so we could get a video of everyone coming up to the summit. It was 7 am and it had taken us 5:45 from camp to summit.

Finally on the summit!



Tragically, I couldn’t find the benchmark (maybe under snow, maybe someone was sitting on it), but I did introduce the group to my summit Oreos idea.

At this point, all I’d eaten all day was a few packets of fruit snacks and a fig bar. I had every intention of eating, but not only did food seem unappealing, every attempt at eating involved gagging and willing myself not to vomit. Okay, well, I’ve hiked farther and higher with less food, so this is fine; at least I was still drinking plenty.

After we all signed the summit register and took pictures, it was time to get going – we were only halfway done, after all. Just below the summit it became especially clear that with the experience levels of the newer mountaineers, it was probably for the best that we hadn’t gone up Casaval. There was only one fall (quickly arrested), but they were very hesitant and reluctant walking down the steeper snow portions. The walk from the summit plateau back down Misery Hill was fantastic – easy downhill without too much abuse on the knees. When we got to Red Banks, we were anticipating a nice glissade back to camp. It turned out that on the upper portion, the track was too icy for a comfortable ride down. Aaron went for it, while the rest of us elected to walk. About halfway down the first straight section, there was a significant change in the condition of the track. Ian and I started glissading there, and the rest of the group followed after us. Using various paths, we descended quickly back to camp. Corneliu had told us that he would be able to walk faster than we could glissade, which was true, but he was also walking faster than we could walk. He apparently has a superhuman ability to prance down hills without falling or injuring himself. In the soft snow where I wasn’t glissading excessively slowly, it was definitely faster for me to have not walked.

Descending below Red Banks

Ian and Anna coming down from Red Banks

We sat in the tent and debated how fast we should put everything away. Tearing down the tent meant sitting in the sun until everyone else was ready, and we correctly guessed that everyone else wouldn’t be ready quickly. Just minutes after we had that conversation, Ryan arrived and said he was surprised that Ian and I weren’t packed and ready to go already, whereupon we recounted the discussion we’d just had on the matter. We did get most of our stuff packed by noon, leaving the tent for last. Unsurprisingly, it took over an hour more for everyone else to be packed up and ready to leave (they might have actually put some thought into packing, whereas we just shoved everything in our packs however it would fit and decided to deal with it back at the cars).

If you want a solitary wilderness experience, Helen Lake is definitely not the place for you.

Ian and I – walking at the same pace on the downhill, even if he was noticeably faster than I uphill – weren’t sure what route everyone else was taking back, but wanted to take the trail as it seemed like a better option than taking the route we’d come in with. At one point we saw Aaron and waited for him to catch up to us. We talked about waiting for the rest of the group, but none of us wanted to do that standing in the sun. We continued the short distance to Horse Camp where we found Corneliu waiting for us. It took the remaining half of our party over an hour to join us there, but at least we were in the shade with spring water to drink whereas in the parking lot we’d have been in the sun or in the hot cars.

After some group pictures, we were on our way again. Ian realized he’d left his camera at Horse Camp and ran back to get it. Anna, Ryan and I stayed by his pack to wait for him, but before he got back, Anna decided to leave and get a head start since she was going more slowly; Ryan went with her. Eventually we all met back in the parking lot around 5. The group was planning to go to dinner somewhere in town, but since I had to be back for work the next morning I decided to leave and eat Taco Bell along the way. Thanks to my usual dawdling on the drive home plus a stop for a quick nap, I arrived just after midnight. I very responsibly unpacked my sleeping bag and sleeping pad to dry before going to bed.

Lessons Learned

• Sunscreen sticks are a good way to keep your face protected from sunny snow without stopping to take off gloves or having to put greasy hands back in your gloves.
• Much like on slabs, I need to get better at trusting my feet when I’m walking up steeper snow.
• Bring a shovel for snow camping if you’re not going to be at a crowded tourist trap campsite.
• Fritos go well in mashed potatoes

If you look really closely in the center of the photo, you can see a helicopter dropping off SAR personnel who were helping transport an injured hiker out.