I was 22 and it had been a liflong dream to Climb Mt. Shasta, which is 14,161 feet high.
(Go to google images and type in mt. Shasta to see pictures)
3 friends and I decided to go up the day after the pageant of the Life of Christ at the Amphitheater in the little city of Mt. Shasta below the mountain. In order to accomplish this we ate a good dinner at a restaurant called Marilyn's (no longer there) (I think there is a Mexican restaurant where it was located now. We had vegeburgers and hot chocolate while getting ready for the ascent. I had rented Crampons and an ice axe at a nearby climbing and ski shop.(I'm not sure if The Fifth Season skiing and climbing and sporting goods store had opened yet).
The four of us donned all our gear and started our hike to Horse Camp(an emergency shelter around 9000 feet elevation about 1 1/2 miles to 2 miles from Everitt Memorial Highway at Bunny Flats. I later spent my 25th birthday there alone in 25 feet of snow in 1973 alone. Only the chimney of the fireplace and stove reached above the snow then.
My guitar and the home wood stove kept me company while the winds howled outside. A wonderful memory.
We all reached Horse Camp Emergency Lodge near dusk on Sunday. After talking and singing with a guitar around the large campfire in front of the lodge with other climbers and campers we got in our sleeping bags and went to sleep around 8 or 9 pm because we knew we would be up by 2am or 3am to begin our climb in order to summit and return by the next sundown to Horse camp. The other method we did not use is to pack all ones gear up to Lake Helen and either dig a snow cave or pitch a tent(depending upon the time of year) and to Summit from there. A third popular way is to drive to the end of Everitt Memorial Highway and to hike the ridge to the top from there. The third route is safer in regard to not getting killed by rocks kicked up from climbers ahead of you on the route. Since the mountain is so steep even a one or 2 inch pebble dislodged from a climber ahead of you can be fatal when it comes down the mountain at 60 miles per hour or faster. And since 20,000 people a year attempt to summit Mt. Shasta and since the Horse Camp route is the most popular if you do the math you can expect about 6 to 20 people ahead of you year around on the route. So unless you are the first one on the route that day watch out for pebbles unless it is all soft snow all along the route.
Anyway, I started to get cold and was unable to sleep that night and so told the guys I was going to set out alone just to stay warm. I put my pack and gear except for water and enough food for the day, gloves, a wool hat, sunglasses so I wouldn't go snowblind or have problems with 100 mph winds common on the summit or from dust or other things. I started out along. Near Lake Helen the fastest of our group passed me. He was the first to summit and the first to get down. Three of our group of 4 made it to the summit that day including me. Since I was feeling a little colder than I liked I reached the summit last at about 4pm. On the way at about 12,000 feet I found a seagull who couldn't fly because of the extremely thin air. Since I knew he wouldn't likely survive unless I did something I chased him off a cliff so he could get air under his wings and fly and survive the experience. I was having difficulty myself getting enough air and so I took about 2 to 4 times more breaths per minute than if I was jogging at sea level. So getting enough air for me at least was more like running at sea level. I felt very lightheaded but very impressed with being able to see all the way to the Pacific Ocean as it was a very clear day that August. After I reached the summit and put my name and the time and date I had reached the summit in the book there. I started to descend. Oh, by the way one of my best friends had reached the summit but on the way down had sat down and fallen asleep around 13,500 feet. I woke him up so he wouldn't freeze or get hypothermia and sent him down the mountain. He seemed a little disoriented but said I should summit as he would be okay.
The only reason I knew I would be okay reaching the summit so late was that I brought about a 10 foot square piece of the kind of plastic you see on greenhouses sometimes.
I folded it up double or triple and slid down about 4 thousands feet in a snow shute at about 30 mph using my ice axe as a break. When I reached about Lake Helen the snow was too sporadic to do that anymore so then I got up and walked starting at about 10,000 feet. I met my 3 other climbing buddies at Horse Camp and we were all happy to have survived the climb and three of us were happy to have reached the Summit.
We met more of our friends at Marilyn's Restaurant that night but we all had a story to tell the rest of our lives about Climbing Mt. Shasta to the top!
The following web address has a picture of about what the mountain looked like from about 12,000 feet on my way down at 30 mph on plastic with an ice axe as a brake so I didn't die. note. back then we had straps that are now illegal because if an ice axe gets loose with a strap while braking it likely will kill or injure you. So if you do what I did without a strap and you lose your ice axe there really isn't any useful way to stop at that speed. So I would recommend going slower if you slide down like I did.
Though the picture is much more recent and taken by another climber this is just about exactly what I saw too sliding down mt. shasta.
felixwong.com/2005/07/mt-shasta-ca/
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