This was in the 1980s and my older children were ages 5 to 8 years of age then so it was around 1980 when this was true. We had ridden up above 8000 to 9000 feet to I believe Clear Creek or Cold Creek in a friend's 4 wheel drive high center truck. It was still when the 4 wheel drive roads on that side of the mountain were left open by the Forest Service to around 10,000 feet on that side of Mt. Shasta. Now they all are closed above about 8000 feet or lower year around on all sides of the mountain. But then they were still open. Likely they closed them because people got into trouble like we did that were not prepared for a snow storm in August.
We had hiked with the kids several miles with hiking boots (3 adults and 3 children below 8 years of age). And suddenly it went from about us in our t-shirts and shorts and hiking boots to below freezing with a heavy blizzard and a few minutes before it had been about 80 degrees or more. This was bad because we were walking over rocks mostly between 6 inches to 1 foot in diameter. Now imagine those rocks suddenly covered with snow. And worse than that we were several miles from our 4 wheel drive truck owned by a friend of ours.
So, we were all pretty scared. We tried to carry the smaller 2 which were 6 and 5 years of age but had to make the 8 year old boy walk while holding his hand. He was pretty upset we weren't trying to carry him too because we were all cold and going towards hypothermia because we had left our outer shirts and jackets at the truck. So, we were suddenly in below freezing temperatures with children without jackets just in shorts and t-shirts and hiking boots with kids. This would have been bad enough to try to survive just with adults but with kids survival seemed much more unlikely. The 8 year old boy started to go into hypothermia and began hallucinating from being too cold. I wouldn't let go of his hand because he was losing it and the younger children were now crying too. But, as adults we had to get them to safety no matter how much distress anyone was in because we all were freezing now in the snow.
But, the snow made us fall and we had to put the 2 children we were carrying down because the snow on the 6inch to 12 inch rocks was making the adults fall down. So, we held all the kids hands and forced them back to the truck where we could put on warmer clothes and turn the heater on. Luckily, we made it and the truck had very very off road tires capable of driving through this type of snow down the mountain and we didn't slip off a dirt road cliff a couple of times going down and didn't turn over on the steep road in the snow going down Mt. Shasta.
And remember this is August! This wasn't December to April this was August in the early 1980s.
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