Shasta Revisited

We arrived at Bunny Flat on Friday afternoon at about 4:30. We spent an hour getting our gear prepared, wilderness permits and summits passes paid, and boots laced up nice and tight. I noticed the extra weight in my pack as soon as I shouldered it; we were carrying overnight gear this time and our loads were five or more pounds heavier for it. I estimate that our packs were in the neighborhood of forty-five pounds each. Chris carried the tent, which made his pack perhaps a pound or two heavier than mine.

I was amazed at how little snow remained at Bunny Flat. Just three weeks ago when I made my first attempt at the summit with Graham, the entire area was covered with a foot of snow. No snow cover remained, and when we set out on the trail to Horse Camp at about five-thirty in the afternoon, it was over a dry and dusty trail.

The hike to horse camp took about an hour. There was a large group of teenagers milling around the cabin and drinking from the spring. We drank one liter of spring water each and filled our water bottles (four liters each). This would be our last chance for water for the remainder of the climb, as we were not carrying a stove for melting snow. We chatted with a few other climbers who were setting up their camps near the cabin. They seemed skeptical when I told them we were heading on up to fifty-fifty flat or possibly to Lake Helen if we got ambitious. It must have been ten minutes to seven when we strapped on our crampons and went stomping out over the snowfield leading to the entrance to Avalanche Gulch.

The snow was wet and sloppy from the intense solar radiation that had been striking it all day long. The air temperature was a balmy seventy-five degrees and we walked in shorts and t-shirts. As we climbed out into the Climber’s Gully above Horse Camp, I realized that Chris was having a hard time keeping up with me. I stopped several times to wait for him, and as we ascended higher and higher into thinner and thinner air, he began to fall further behind. By the time we reached fifty-fifty flat two hours later, the sun had ducked behind Casaval Ridge and was quickly making for the horizon. The air temperature remained comfortable, but we donned our outerwear in anticipation of falling temperatures after sunset. Chris was tired and his shoulders hurt from the backpack. I waited fifteen minutes for him to catch up at the campsites at fifty-fifty flat. Due to his exhaustion and the coming darkness, we considered camping here for the night, but in the end we decided to press on for Lake Helen. The campsites at fifty-fifty flat are not nearly as nice as at Lake Helen, and no one else was camping in the vicinity. We did not have a snow shovel and would have been unable to dig ourselves in very well, though there were some improvised rock shelters left by previous climbers that would have afforded us some protection from the wind.

We donned our headlamps and trudged on uphill toward Lake Helen. I was feeling strong and climbed quickly as darkness fell around us. Having never climbed this high on the mountain by headlamp alone I felt some trepidation, but I knew the route well and I could clearly see the snowy ledge hundreds of feet above where Lake Helen—and my bed for the night—waited. Using my ski poles for balance in the boot track I made my way up the final pitch to Lake Helen. I found the snow on the moraine quite soft and deep, and I immediately began to posthole to my knees. Not wanting to waste any of what little remained of my stamina, I quickly located a likely spot for our tent. Fortunately, I was able to borrow a snow shovel from one of our neighbors, but I would definitely not climb the mountain again without one of my own. Many tents have blown right off the side of the mountain when sudden gusts of wind have caught them unanchored. The best defense against the wind is to dig in. I set myself this task as I waited for my climbing partner to reach the moraine. After about a half an hour—by this time it was past ten o’clock and completely dark—I’d excavated a two-foot deep fosse for our tent, but there was still no sign of Christopher. I began to get a little worried. What was taking him so long? Had he become lost, or worse? I was certain he couldn’t climb past me without my seeing the bright beam of his LED headlamp (which was several times brighter than my incandescent), and I knew there was no chance he could stray too far from the correct route, because he’d have found himself climbing either Sargent’s Ridge to the south, or Casaval Ridge to the north—neither of which could be done without realizing that something was seriously wrong with one’s orienteering. Curious what had become of him, I made my way through the knee-deep snow to the edge of the moraine to take a look downslope.

I was relieved to see the sweep of Chris’s blue headlamp on the snowfield just below the moraine. He arrived a few minutes later, looking haggard. We quickly set up our tent, ate a hasty meal of bagels, cream cheese, energy bars, and apples, then went to bed. I seldom sleep well in a sleeping bag. I find it constricting, particularly in the way it limits the range of motion of my legs. That night was particularly long, owing to the fact that my climbing partner snores loudly. I lay awake most of the night, and about three in the morning I began to hear climbers in the neighboring tents begin their preparations to ascend to the summit.

I saw no reason to get started that early in the morning. The snow would still be plenty firm in a few hours’ time. By waiting I also increased my chances of making a glissade descent; the snow would be soft enough by around noon to permit a safe, controlled butt slide. I watched as the early-bird climbers got their “alpine start,” thinking all the while that they were making life unnecessarily difficult on themselves. Then again, what was mountaineering if not making life unnecessarily difficult?

At five o’clock I rousted my sleeping climbing partner and asked if he intended to climb to the summit or not. He decided he didn’t feel up to climbing any higher. He had an altitude headache, and his shoulders and hips were sore from carrying the backpack. Remembering how worn-out I’d felt my first time up the mountain, I didn’t argue. I prepared my gear and made my way outside into the predawn light.

As I began to ascend above Lake Helen toward the Heart, I quickly discovered that the bellows tongue on my boots was pinching painfully on my ankles. After the ordeal I’d gone through with blisters on my previous climb, I resolved to take action early rather than wait until the condition became so painful that I couldn’t continue. I also noticed that my calf muscles were becoming tired very quickly—more quickly than I remembered from my first ascent, even though the boots I was wearing were much lighter today than they had been then. I determined that the lack of stiffness in my boot soles was to blame. At each step, as my boots flexed, my calves were obliged to take the full weight of my step. I remembered reading that one element of proper climbing technique is to allow the maximum load possible to be borne by the boot and by the bones of your legs, rather than by muscle power. I solved this problem by changing my angle of approach to the mountain. I adopted a modified French Step, working my way up the hill slowly and steadily by crossing one foot over the other in a traverse. This method proved very helpful, and I noticed several other climbers imitating my style as I passed them on my way to the Red Banks.

I reached the Red Banks at about eight o’clock; it had taken me two and half hours to climb from 10,400 feet at Lake Helen to just under 13,000 feet at Thumb Rock. This spot marked the turnaround point of my previous attempt three weeks earlier. Every step I would take from here on would be on new terrain. I paused to catch my breath, take in the view of Shastina and the little blue jewel of Sisson Lake to the north. I could see a fracture line—called a Bergschrund—where the wall of the Whitney glacier was beginning to pull away from the east flank of Shastina. After my brief rest, I began to trudge up the next pitch, Misery Hill.

Misery Hill would be more aptly named Misery Hills because there are three distinct slopes that must be climbed, each cruelly creating a false horizon, and with it a false hope that the summit plateau lies just over the next rise. The first hill is of moderate steepness and was somewhat less windy, while the two higher hills were somewhat less steep but scoured by high winds. The gusts were reaching forty miles per hour and were plenty strong to knock me off balance a number of times as I climbed. There is virtually no shelter from the wind and it can quickly chill a climber to the bone, making Misery Hill a lousy place to stop and rest. As long as I kept climbing I maintained an adequate temperature inside my longjohns and my shells. I was able to make a brief stop for rest and water on the upper reaches of Misery Hill were some rocks jutted out of the snow and provided some relief from the relentless wind. I found it difficult to drink from my Nalgene bottle: the time it took to swallow the water was too much time spent away from the critical task of breathing in that thin air. I had to coordinate my breathing and swallowing so that I didn’t become winded.

I soon reached the summit plateau and the wind abated. This was my favorite part of the climb. The sky was perfectly clear and deep blue. To the west the snow-capped Trinity mountains—they’d seemed so high from the car yesterday—appeared to lie beneath my feet. To the north, Big Valley extended for thirty miles on into Oregon. To the south, Lassen Peak and the Siskiyou range, and beyond that a thick mantle of brown smog hanging over the northern Sacramento valley. I could see the Clear Creek climbing route ascending the mountain to my south, but I saw no climbers there. On the north flank lay the twisted piles of ice known as the Hotlum and Bolam glaciers.

The summit plateau is broad and several hundred yards long. At its east end are two rocky pinnacles, the first of which is the true summit. As I crossed the plateau, the smell of sulphur reached me on the wind and I remembered that John Muir had once spent a freezing, snow-blind night up here, huddled next to the suphrous fumaroles to stay alive. I wasn’t too concerned about freezing to death, since the temperature was in the upper fifties, but I could imagine how terrifying it would be to be caught up here in a sudden storm. I scrambled up through loose scree and patchy snow to the summit, reaching my destination at nine-thirty. It had taken me four hours from Lake Helen, and the best news was that it was all downhill from there. I wrote my name in the logbook and spent a few minutes taking in the vista, then began to make my way down.