Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Grey Butte on Mt. Shasta

is one of the views down the side of Grey Butte. Once 30 to 40 years ago I went down the opposite side in a 6 to 10 foot glissade per step on pieces of shale 4 to 14 inches in diameter. It was pretty amazing then but now at age 66 if I tried that I would soon be knocked unconscious for glissading is a very young and coordinated man's game. One mistake and you are dead.
However this picture is of rocks way too big to glissade on. They are all 1 foot to 3 feet long or diameter so if you tried to do that here anyone would just likely die.


is one of the views of Mt. Shasta from Grey Butte. However, since this is a Iphone 5s panorama shot it changes it from what you would actually see in person even though it is incredibly beautiful like this.

Here is something on glissading:  (it is not for the faint of heart).

Glissade (climbing) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glissade_(climbing)
Wikipedia
Glissading is the act of descending a steep snow- or scree-covered slope via a controlled slide on one's feet or buttocks. It is an alternative to other descent ...
Methods - ‎Sitting glissade - ‎Standing glissade - ‎References

When I glissaded down over scree standing I still thought I was immortal (late teens early 20s). I thought I could do it without injury and I did along with my friend. We were laughing because it is such a thrill going down. But, not for the faint of heart.

When I climbed Mt. Shasta in August 1970 there was a lot of snow from just above Horse Camp to the top of the mountain. So, I took some plastic to slide down on. Then we had straps on our ice Axes so I just sat on my plastic folded over several times, watched out for rocks and slid down the snow from about 12,000 feet to almost 10,000 feet in altitude pretty fast. Sometimes I was doing 20 to 30 miles per hour and braking with my ice axe so I didn't die. I wouldn't do this again either because I was a young man then but now I'm 66. So, after I summited Mt. Shasta and got past the cliffs where it wasn't so steep doing this likely would be fatal I found a place where others had done this that had climbed to the top and using this channel quickly dropped about 2,000 feet while moving forward about 1/4 to 1/2 mile on a sitting glissade with an ice axe as a brake.


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