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Climbing Mount Shasta
"Apparently they start very early," John grumbled. It was dark, but there were lights and noise from
tents around us. I stood up, and I saw lights on mountain a thousand up. It was 5:30 a.m. Hmm... climbers start early. With that new insight, we packed our daypacks, hid our big backpacks in rocks, and stepped onto ice.
Helen Lake was a mile of ups and downs, through sun-dished ice. Then we reached loose rock at base of a steep slope, in Avalanche Gully. We started climbing Mount Shasta. an hour later, we quit.
"I can't do it," John gasped. "Can't get enough air." We were at about 11,000 feet, and we knew there was less oxygen, but this was first time John had actually been this high on foot. I once drove higher in Colorado, but apparently driving wasn't a strenuous enough for me to notice thinner air. I noticed it here. We both did. We sat down and rested for a minute.
"Are you sure," I asked. He was - I wasn't. It was light now, and John didn't see any problem hiking down four hours to car alone. I would go on to summit, and then come back down by evening. I had to continue. Mount Shasta was my first mountain, and I hadn't even used poop bag yet.
Altitude Sickness
The "Red Bank" is a line of broken cliffs above Avalanche Gully. I scrambled, climbed, slipped on ice, and eventually found a way up and over. Then there were long steep slopes covered in loose rocks, with a few bamboo sticks marking way. My route converged with that of other climbers, who had come up snow-slope route with crampons and ice axes.
After much climbing, I finally made it to summit, which is called Misery hill, because it isn't actually summit. It just seems like it should be. There was still a mile of snow to cross, and then more rocky terrain. One snow field had three-foot-high peaks covering it, like a huge merange pie.
I rested a moment, and realized I'd been hearing a new sound. Bang! Bang! Bang! It was inside of my head, which had never been so loud before. Hmm...interesting. I got used to noise and pain after an hour or so.
I got used to smell of sulphur too. Mount Shasta, it turns out, is a volcano. When John Muir climbed it more than a hundred years earlier, he had to huddle next to hot sulphur gas vents to survive a night near peak. He was alternately freezing and burning.
At The Top Of Mount Shasta
"So this is top?" I mumbled lamely to guy who had just told me John Muir story. Clouds, and smoke from forest fires, obscured view in every direction, but it felt good to be so high, and down to east, I saw my first glacier, a few hundred feet below.
"You can write your name in register there," guy told me, pointing to something in rocks. Guestbooks on top of mountains? Another lesson for day. I signed in, wrote some comment, and started down mountain.
Sun cups, or whatever they call those depresions in snow, fill with water in warm afternoon sun - another discovery. I'd climb out of one ten-foot-wide bowl and slide into pond at bottom of next. This was pattern until I thankfully reached ankle-twisting mile of rocks piled up below Helen Lake. Climbing down, I realized, is more difficult than climbing up, or at least more dangerous.
I found trail, my headache disappeared, I reached road, where John was waiting. By evening we were driving towards Michigan, Mount Shasta hidden in clouds and smoke behind us. Oh, and yes, I did get to use poop bag. Somewhere around 11,500 feet, I think, which I remembered when I was looking through my pack. "Pull over at nearest garbage can," I told John.
Steve Gillman is a long-time backpacker, and advocate ultralight backpacking. His advice and stories can be found at http://www.The-Ultralight-Site.com
