Why is this true?
Well. especially among young men 15 to 21 they think they are immortal a lot and they are not. So, unless you take seriously your limitations as you climb this mountain you can easily die.
The easiest way to die on Mt. Shasta is when all the snow is melted off and you go up from Horse camp to where it is really steep above Lake Helen. All one climber above you has to do is to slip a little and let a pebble loose and that pebble often can be fatal if you aren't watching for it coming at you especially in the head, face or eye. The littler pebbles might not kill you if they hit your main body because your snow jackets likely would take up some of the punch. But, if that rock is fist size or more it will knock you down and you might not ever stop rolling until you are dead.
A friend of mine was telling me about coming down from Red Banks too late after everything froze in the early 1970s. He was the summer Caretaker for the Sierra Club that year for the Sierra Club who hire a caretaker to save the lives of climbers mostly and to help them climb more safely if they will listen.
So, he had stayed too long on the summit to register that some record breaking climber had climbed the mountain 3 times in 36 hours from Horse Camp but got enthralled by the Perseid Meteor shower and stayed up there too long without camping gear up on top of Red Banks. Now Red Banks is two cliffs that most climbers climb up and down to get to the top of the mountain IF they climb up from Horse camp on that route. I didn't do this but my route isn't recommended because it was considered too dangerous for most climbers then in 1970. However, I survived going up it and down it even though it is very very steep and usually covered with snow. However, the snow conditions allowed me to do that on that particular day both up and down. So, I never climbed up or down Red Banks ever. Didn't want to.
So, here is my friend on top of Red Banks and it's 2 am or after and starting to get cold and he had his helmet light which then was huge from fighting fires which he had also done the last summer for the Forest Service then. then his climbing light gear got caught in his Ice ax and he knew this might kill him if he jumped down 25 feet to the next level of the cliff.
So, as he jumped he threw away the headlamp gear and the ice axe so they wouldn't come down on top of him when he landed and kill him after falling 25 feet.
So, then he jumped because he was still pretty young then and didn't want to freeze to death that night.
Well. he didn't die and the ice axe and headlamp missed him so he survived that but then he went over the 2nd 25 foot cliff and landed in some rocks and was injured. He said he was pissing blood for a week or two from how he landed but his hip hurt the worst.
Then about 6 am climbers found him climbing up the mountain and asked if they could help him. He told them that if they found his headlamp and Ice axe he might be okay and they could finish climbing the mountain.
It took him the rest of the day to hobble back down to Horse Camp lodge to heal himself up over the next few days or so until he had two days off. So, he survived all this somehow but was pissing blood for at least a week or more which isn't a good sign either. But , he survived.
This is why I say that most people who die are usually 15 to 21 years old or 12 to 25 years old because they underestimate what it's going to take to survive climbing up and down this mountain and they die with no one there to rescue them.
So, "Everyone needs to be aware of their limitations when they climb Mt. Shasta or they might not survive this climb!"
However, if you can survive this climb this is still an achievement of a lifetime and a truly amazing experience!
But, you have to survive the climb first to tell the story about it later. This is the thing!
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