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Monday, June 16, 2008
Going Down Big Mt. Shasta 6/15/08
The skiing around the lake has really turned to crap over the past couple weeks. The gate up to the fourth of July chutes finally opened last friday, and if you missed it don't worry. Since the first couple times I rode my bike up there the snow has gotten progressively less smooth...imagine that. So, usually about once a year I try to ski Mount Shasta. It usually happens anywhere from mid May to mid June. This year it just happened to be yesterday.
For those of you who have never been up there, its really a pretty amazing mountain. It is one of about fifteen 14,000+ foot peaks in the state of California, and probably one of the most straightforward and easy to climb. Most of the trailheads sit somehwere between six and seven thousand feet, so getting to the 14,162 foot summit still takes quite a bit of effort.
After making the super last minute decision to go up there we got the crew together and left Tahoe City at about 8:30 Saturday night. With gas prices being completely through the roof like they are we went ahead and packed in all our crap and 4 people in the same rig and started driving. We arrived the Brewer Creek Trailhead on the east side of the mountain at 2 am, unrolled the sleeping bags and a got about three hours of sleep. We woke up at 5 and threw all of our stuff together and we were on our way about 5:30 am. The smokey haze in the air made for a ridiculously red sunrise. Starting from the car at 7,200 feet we were looking at about a 7,000 foot hike, no problem.
The ascent route up the east side is very straightforward. Basically you hike in a straightline for the summit the entire way. The route starts you on a glacier between the Hotlum and Wintun glaciers, and eventually you cross a moraine onto the Wintun glacier for the top 1,500 vert or so. For those of you who have never hiked 7,000 feet in a day, it is hard, and painful, but that's kinda the point. So what was a guy to do, maybe go for a new personal best time to get up there, why not... Topping out at 10:30 am on the summit without a breath of wind was pretty outstanding, especially because the first 4,00 feet of my ski run was going to be steep, uninterrupted, smooth corn. That's right, I'm talking 4 grand right off the top. There's hardly anywhere else you can go skiing around here right now, but above 10,000 feet on Shasta is where its at. So we dropped in around 11 am and skied the crap out of it. Getting down to the bottom of the Wintun glacier we couldn't even believe how smooth and long the run was... then the skiing got interesting. In my haste to get to the top I neglected to notice how huge and plentiful the suncups were down near the bottom. From 10,000 feet down you could ski, but it wasn't pretty.
Overall it was a pretty unbelievable day, I got to ski a side of the mountain that I'd only looked down from the top, and the skiing that mattered was spectacularly good considering the skiing I've done over the past couple months. If you plan to go, just remember that the mountain is huge, really big, and the bottom is gonna suck but the top will make it all worth it.
Jeremy
This pic was taken about 20 minutes into the hike, our route is straight for the top from here, ascending the obvious snow filled gully just lookers left at the top.
This shot is from about halfway, notice all the wacky smoke haze in the sky. This is where it starts to hurt.
Standing on the summit, the trailhead is just down in the trees about where the snow runs out.
A shot of the whole mountain. Our route is from right off the summit, and straight down, the lower 3,000 feet or so is obscured by the trees.
Labels: Backcountry, Jeremy Benson, MT Shasta, Ski
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