The four of us climbed Mt. Shasta the day after the "I AM" pageant of the life of Christ in the Amphitheater in Mt. Shasta in 1970.
It was Mike, and Robert and Anton and I which were guys I have known for some time. Mike I knew from our church who was a surfer then but later graduated from College. Then Robert graduated UCR or University of California at Riverside, then my friend Anton graduated with a master's degree from UCLA. So, then we started to climb Mt. Shasta up to as far a Horse Camp just after Pageant on Sunday so by Dark we had made it to Horse camp to spend the night there camping before we climbed the mountain the next day. We had agreed we needed to leave Horse Camp by 3 o'clock in the morning to make it to the summit and back to Horse camp in one day. However, I got cold because I didn't bring a warm enough sleeping bag for how cold it gets at Horse Camp even in August which is below freezing. So, I woke up at 2 or 2:30 Am too cold and decided to get up and head for the Summit Slowly. I woke up one of my friends enough to tell them I was cold and starting to the summit but slowly.
However, about 1 mile above Horse Camp I saw would could only be described now as something like the Burning Bush that Moses Saw on Mt. Arararat in the Holy Land.
IT talked to me telepathically and said to me: "I"m not here for you but you may stay awhile."
Then finally it said: "You have to leave now or you might die from how much being near me has changed you."
I found out later that this was true. I found out in the next few months my spiritual gifts multiplied many times over and things I only thought came to pass and I started to get scared because I realized that this Burning Bush likely was "The Holy Spirit" and I didn't know how to deal with what was happening to me at the time.
Eventually, I left California for a month and visited a girlfriend in Santa Fe, New Mexico and that calmed me down a lot even though that girl and I didn't stay together partly because I was a California boy and she was a New Mexico Girl From Santa Fe.
However, after my burning bush experience I slowly but surely climbed the mountain to the top. All the other buddies passed me and I just kept walking slowly really changed from the burning bush experience spiritually. I felt very different and there were tears of Gratitude to God for Blessing me in this way of having this blessing sort of like Moses did.
Eventually I got up to Red Banks on Mt. Shasta but I didn't want to climb the rope up the cliff. So, because I had crampons (spikes for your boots in the snow or ice) and I had an ice axe I decided to take a more dangerous route that is much more vertical up a glacier to a plateau around 12,000 feet or 13,000 feet. I climbed this steep place and just as I climb up to where it levels out on the glacier I fainted but luckily I fainted on a level place just over the crest of the glacier. When I woke up I first found a seagull stranded there that couldn't take off because at that altitude the air is too thin to take off for a bird. You can still fly theoretically but you cannot take off when the air is that thin for a bird. So, I chased this bird off a cliff so it could fly and save itself and not just beat itself to death trying to take off when it couldn't.
Then I finally summited Mt. Shasta and put my name and date and time I summited in the book they keep there for this on the summit of the mountain.
I went down then the same way I came up and I had brought plastic to slide down on when it was safe enough to do this. I held the plastic between my legs with my left hand while I used the ice axe as a brake which is really dangerous if you are not a handy coordinated person like myself. So, I survived doing this and it was great fun to slide down the snow at 10 plus miles an hour doing this. However, if you go to fast doing this you likely won't survive this because the ice axe might not stop you at too high a speed. Also, I had a strap then on my ice axe which helped in this too. They don't put them on ice axes anymore because for many people their ice axe killed them or injured them seriously when they did exactly what I was doing then in 1970. However, I had a great time and it all worked great for me and I got back to Horse camp by sundown and walked with my friends down to a car and then a restaurant in town and had dinner with them then in August of 1970. We were amazed we had succeeded at what we had set out to do!
By God's Grace
No comments:
Post a Comment