Hypothermic experiences when I was young enough to get into trouble still from adventures

 The worst experience of hypothermia I had was with two friends near Horse Camp during Christmas vacation on Mt. Shasta in 1970, We came close to dying in this experience mostly because of youthful ignorance of College age boys. i think I was 22 then in 1970. I had started the day in San Diego where I was going to college then and then I drove north about 2 hours to Los Angeles to Palos Verdes to pick up my friend who was going to UCLA then as we had rock climbed in Yosemite national park with ropes and pitons and also after that and we had also climbed Mt. Shasta in August 1970 as well that year after the "Iam" Come Pageant there in Mt. Shasta of the life of Christ in an amphitheater in August every year.

Except maybe during the Covid years.

So, being young and adventurous I picked up my friend in Palos Verdes and then another friend in Chico where his mother lived then as he was a student at Sacramento State University. So, this was a very long day of driving my 1966 SeaBlue colored VW Bug that we all drove north in that day. So, after an early start in San Diego we arrived at Bunny Flat on Mt. Shasta after dark. However, being adventurous (even though the snow was coming down) we decided to strap on our snow shoes and head towards Horse Camp emergency Sierra Club Lodge at tree line.

Our mistake was that we didn't know how bad this snow storm actually was going to be. Weather reports and GPS devices weren't very good bad then compared to now either. So, as a result we almost died that night from hypothermia. 

The main reason we survived the white out and blizzard that dropped 3 feet of powder snow on us was that one of us had just taken a snow survival course at Sacramento State University. So, when we got int the White out (a white out means you cannot even see your hand in front of your face in a blizzard or fog or both. So, when we met our footprints because we had walked in a circle we knew we were in serious trouble. So, we dug a snow cave to survive this with our snow shoes. We had not tents or plastic ground cloths because we were young and "immortal?" college boys then. So, we had brought ONLY sleeping bags because we believed we would be staying in the emergency lodge where there is a wood burning stove to get warm and we thought we would be relatively out of the weather. People did stuff like this a lot then but now the rules are more strict for the Sierra Club emergency lodge at Tree line