More Reasons to Travel

For anyone who needs another reason to take a vacation, consider visiting this quaint Austrian hamlet.

(Bitte--nicht so schell: "Please, not so fast!")

(Almost) Climbing Mt. Shasta

Last Saturday morning at three A.M., under a night sky of brilliant stars, Graham and I set out from the parking lot at Bunny Flat (elevation 6500 feet), for the summit of Mt. Shasta. The snow was firm from the cool overnight temperatures, but the night had not been as cold as I’d expected. I’d guess it was in the mid-forties at the parking lot. Higher up on the mountain, as we would soon discover, the temperature had fallen much lower. For the moment, however, we walked in comfort.

I wore my crampons from the start. Without the benefit of snowshoes, I’d say the crampons were necessary right away. We’d decided not to make the summit attempt into a two-day outing by hiking to Lake Helen the first day, camping there, and then pushing for the summit on the second morning. Instead, we’d try for the top straight from the parking lot in a single day. It was a decision I would come to regret. In retrospect, given my poor condition and lack of acclimation to the thin air on the mountain, camping the night at Lake Helen would have been a wiser strategy. This approach would have also gone easier on my feet, because the hiking could have been broken up into two days and I’d have been less likely to develop the painful heel blisters that bothered me on the upper reaches of the mountain.

We crossed the low divide that forms the very bottom of Green Butte Ridge and followed a path of foot-worn snow toward the Sierra Club Cabin at Horse Camp. The stars burned brightly and there was no moon. We used our headlamps, but the snow is so highly reflective that we only really needed the artificial light of the lamps while in the shade of the forest. Once we broke out onto the open snow slopes above treeline, we could see well enough to walk by starlight.

I walked with my ice axe in hand; Graham walked with ski poles. In retrospect, I believe that ski poles are a good idea. I found myself wasting energy trying to compensate for missed foot placements in the heavily-tracked snow; Graham used his poles to steady his gait. He soon outpaced me. It only took me an hour to develop painful blisters on my heels. I stopped and pasted moleskins on them, but the moleskins quickly tore away from the skin and were useless.

We wended our way up through the Climber’s Gully, past 50-50 flat and finally up Stand-Still Hill to base camp at Lake Helen. It was seven-fifteen when we arrived, and by now my heels were bleeding and I was desperately short of breath. I was feeling the altitude much more than I expected I would. As we sat down to rest, eat some energy bars and drink a little water on the edge of the moraine, I stared up at Red Banks three thousand feet above. How would I ever make it up there? I wondered.

Ten minutes later we were ready to begin our ascent of the next pitch, a three thousand vertical foot climb to the top of the Red Banks. It was then that Graham discovered that he’d lost his ice axe. It may have fallen out of the loop he’d secured it to on his backpack. We’ll never know for sure, because we never found it. There was no way that he could climb safely above Lake Helen without an ice axe; he’d have no means to self-arrest if he were to stumble and fall on the steep icy snow slope above.

We considered our situation. Graham was intent on making a bid for the summit. Taking into account my altitude exhaustion and the painful condition of my heels, I decided that Graham had a greater chance of making the summit than I did. I offered him my ice axe, and told him that I would wait at Lake Helen while he climbed. He protested at first, but eventually took my axe and headed off up the hill. Just as he was setting out the first rays of the morning sun crested Sargent’s Ridge to the south and spilled yellow sunlight on the north end of the moraine. Graham appeared smaller and smaller as he climbed higher into upper Avalanche Gulch, toward the prominent snowfield known as The Heart. I sat down in the snow and removed my boots. My heels were bleeding and the moleskins I’d applied a couple of hours earlier were useless. I cut some new moleskins, but this time I held them in place with a full wrap of athletic training tape. This solution would prove to be much more sound; this dressing held up for the rest of the day.

As I finished ministering to my feet, a climbing party of two men and one woman arrived at Lake Helen. The woman was sick with altitude effects and could not climb any higher. When she discovered that I was without an ice axe, she offered me hers. Now I had no excuse! I struggled with my ambivalence for a few minutes, then took my new ice axe in hand and set off up the mountain.

I did not anticipate how difficult and how long would be the climb from Lake Helen to the Red Banks. It took me over three hours to make the ascent of about three thousand feet. The snow fields are steep—steepest, cruelly, near the top, where the pitch approaches thirty-five degrees—and there is no place to rest. Near the top of the pitch I was down to a cycle of twenty steps, then rest. Twenty more steps, rest. My progress was agonizingly slow. There were moments of dizziness where I fought to keep from closing my eyes. I nearly lost my balance several times. When finally I reached the top of Red Banks, I was so exhausted that my legs were quivering uncontrollably. I knew I could go no higher, at least not without rest. I planned to rest on the saddle between Thumb Rock and the base of Misery Hill. Perhaps I could eat a snack, rehydrate, and gather enough strength to continue on to the summit, which I knew to lie only an hour’s climb away.

As I hauled myself up onto the little saddle between Thumb Rock and the base of Misery Hill, where I’d planned to rest, I was greeted by a bone-chilling thirty mile-per-hour wind. I’d been too warm in my long underwear and fleece layers just moments before, but here in the saddle exposed to the cold winds, I was shivering within minutes. There was no shelter from the wind and it became immediately clear that I had only two options: I could either press on higher toward the summit, or I could save the summit for another day and begin down the mountain, out of the wind. Given the state of my legs, there was really no consideration of climbing higher. The difficulty was that I didn’t really trust myself to descend, either. The Red Banks—the steepest part of the entire climb—were just below where I stood and I doubted whether my shaky legs could take me down through them safely. One missed step and I could slide all the way back to Lake Helen. Most of me, anyway—minus the flesh I’d leave on the mountain as I fell.

Providence, apparently, had not scheduled me for a long fall over icy slopes. I successfully negotiated the descent of Red Banks and found a precarious perch—a small boulder sticking a foot or two out of the snow—where I sat down, removed my pack, and rested. I ate a combination of foods—beef jerky, jack cheese, and Tiger’s Milk bars—that would have made me puke on any other day. But at thirteen thousand feet, after eight straight hours of climbing, it was alpine gourmet. I waited there on my rock and tried to assess the conditions for a glissade descent. Glissade is a fancy French term that means sliding down on your ass. It’s much faster and a whole lot less work than traversing down using plunge steps. It takes a surprising amount of muscles strength to descend by traversing—more muscle strength than my tired legs could muster. I watched a few other climbers attempt glissades, and they seemed to be able to control their speed safely. I nervously removed my crampons, slung my pack on my back, and eased myself into a glissade chute, ice axe at the ready.

I quickly learned to control my speed and as I became bolder, my glissade descent toward Lake Helen became faster and faster. I learned that I could use my the spike of my ice axe not only as a brake, but as a rudder. The controls were crude, but I was able to maintain the velocity and line that I wanted—more or less—all the way down to the moraine, where I dusted the excess snow off my shell and out of my boot-tops and waited for Graham to return from the summit.

Graham arrived twenty minutes later, and we descended to the truck. The descent through lower avalanche gulch was slowed somewhat by the snow’s softening in the afternoon sun. I did not envy the climbers who were ascending, each footstep sinking them knee-deep in the slush. I made a note that if I ever climbed this lower reach in the afternoon to certainly bring snowshoes.

We reached the parking lot quickly. I estimate that the entire ascent took about nine hours and the descent took maybe two hours. When I return to try for the summit, I will certainly be in better shape, and I will definitely camp at Lake Helen for the first night. Breaking the climb into two days ought to make it much easier on the legs, and give the cardiopulmonary system more time to acclimate to the elevation.