Traveling north

Since I wasn't invited to travel with  my wife  to San Diego (she said she needed girl time) with our God Daughter (adopted daughter) who is about 30 now and pregnant with Twins so my wife is heading south to spend a week with our God Daughter soon who is pregnant. Since I wasn't invited to this Girl event I headed north with my 4 wheel drive to Mount Shasta where I love to be. It was beautiful and sunny except for the wind over a couple of passes I had to drive over on the way until I reached about Redding and some clouds were coming south that looked like they might contain some rain. When I reached Mt. Shasta it was snowing on Mt. Eddy visible from the freeway so I drove up all the way up to Everette Memorial road because sometimes when it snows they close the road at Bunny Flat and I didn't want that to happen to me before I drove up to the end of the Road where the old Ski lift used to be before the Snow AValanche destroyed it years ago now I believe in the early 1970s or so. I had friends who helped disassemble it way back when that lived up here when I was in my early 20s.

But, now it is just a parking lot at the end of the road with an incredible view of the mountain and the clouds far below. It I believe is between 8000 and 9000 feet right above tree line where the trees mostly stop growing. There are trees above here but mostly they are sort of stunted from the cold and altitude and few and far between. One of the routes goes up the mountain from here but one of my friends up here says people have died on this route lately for some reason. Likely they fell off the ridge trying to avoid the rock avalanches up from Horse CAmp Sierra Club Lodge up that route.

There is a reason why Mt. Shasta is considered the easiest hard climb or the hardest easy climb in California. However, people die here every year that underestimate the weather and the mountain. The problem is the weather changes in minutes to white outs often so when clouds come in and you can't see your hand in front of your face way up on a dangerous mountain this can be bad if you can't hunker down and wait the white out out until it goes away. If you try to move over dangerous terrain in a white out often it can be fatal if you aren't calm and certain enough and warm enough while you are doing this where you actually are on the mountain. So, you need to see the hazards to anticipate them or else often it is curtains if you try to move anyway.

If I'm lucky my daughter studying at the university in Portland will have time for me to visit them too. We'll see how all that works out. They are both studying hard so we'll see.

There started to be snow off the road from Lower Sand Flat up to where the old ski bowl once was. I took pictures of the mountain which if I can later down load them to this macbook pro I might add to this article. We'll see how much time I have for that. 1 to 3 inches of snow all over the mountain from about Bunny Flats to the top of the mountain now.