The route:
I met up with David and Tyler in Oakland after work on Friday and we drove up to Mt Shasta that evening. It was a short night sleeping in the parking lot, as we were up at ~515, and on skis at 6.
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| Starting the journey up in early morning light |
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| Sun starting to make it's presence known |
There was a really solid freeze overnight and conditions were very firm. I put on ski crampons once we started climbing avalanche gulch and used them right to 11600ft when I switched to crampons. The snow at this point was a bit too steep, and I likely would have had issues safely doing the change over when forced to any higher.
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| Looking up the boot pack to the top of Avalanche Gulch |
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| Looking down Avalanche Gulch |
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| Thumb rock at the top of the Red Banks |
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| Misery Hill, the false summit of Shasta |
After taking a bit of a break at Red Banks / Thumb Rock, we continued on boot-packing to the summit. If the snow here was better, it would definitely be skin-able, but it was very icy, windswept and chunky on this top stretch. I was starting to feel the altitude on the push to the summit.
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| Summit block from the top of Misery Hill |
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| View looking west from the summit |
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| David and Tyler on the summit |
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| Some stinky sulfur springs just below the summit |
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| Skiing the endless corn snow on the way down |
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| The slide path of the Valentines Day avalanche close to Bunny Flat |
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| View of Avalanche Gulch from the trail head at Bunny Flat |
All in all, it was a great day. It was 8.5 hours elapsed time up, and about .5 hour down. We were back in Oakland 26 hours after setting off the day before!
