Mt. Shasta 14,179 Feet

[Vaca Russ]

We completed our preparations for an exciting climb and drove up the Sacramento Valley to the southern end of the Cascades. The weather was perfect.

We met our group at the trailhead at Bunny Flat.

The hike to Horse Camp was short. It was 1.7 miles and about a 1000 foot elevation gain. Our packs were very heavy with equipment. Horse Camp is private property owned by the Sierra Club. There is an historic cabin at Horse camp.

There are rules for the climbers.

Here are some of the climbing routes with ratings.

Sport felt quite muscular after hauling that giant pack up to camp.

There is the nicest privy I’ve ever experienced at Horse Camp. It is a solar powered, composting privy.

The next day we traveled farther up the slope to a spot below Lake Helen. This is Sport with our two guides Jason and Brandon.

This is the route farther up the slope to our second night’s camping spot.

Some chose to camp in the snow but we set up our tent on a flat spot Sport snagged before the others could get there.

To be continued…

[Vaca Russ]

This is a view of the ridge we climbed the next morning. We were up at 1 AM and left at 2 AM. The climb was a cold and grueling climb with some dangers. We were about half way up the slope when Brandon suddenly yelled, “ROCK!! RUN LEFT!! RUN LEFT!!”

A rock, bigger than a bowling ball, was bouncing down the slope at a very high rate of speed. It was very lucky none of the climbers on the slope got hit. It probably would have been fatal.
There can be a little bit of technical rock climbing when you reach the Red Banks depending on the route you take.

Our guide, Brandon, demonstrates why this rock feature is known as the thumb.

Once you pass the Red Banks you are confronted with Misery Hill.

There is what Brandon calls the windy ridge at the top of Misery Hill. Here you can see Brandon and his new wife, Lauren, planning their climbing strategy. You can see the summit pinnacle in the background.

We reached the summit and signed the register.

I can’t convey how hard we worked to get this picture. It was literally months of hard training.

We had a great group of four guides and eleven clients.

Thank you for reading our post.

-Russ

[maverick]

Haven't been up Shasta in decades, stayed at Bunny Flats the first night, and Helen
the next. Thank you for the TR and fantastic photo's.

[old and slow]

Vaca Russ,
I always enjoy reading your trip reports and this one is no exception! Congratulations on this major achievement.

[Shawn]

Nice TR and photos; congrats on the big summit.

[giantbrookie]

Nice report. Shasta is such a fun climb/hike no matter how you do it. I couldn't help notice how little snow you had, too. That makes for much harder work, plus it probably means more rockfall, too. Those rocks are scary too when get going on the snow as if on an air cushion. Its a very different sort of deal than the bouncing rocks on rocks.

Shasta was a key climb for Judy because in order to get in shape to climb it (dayhike it in our case), we needed a serious warm up (conditioning) trip, and Judy decreed that the warm up trip must involve high country fish, which is a difficult thing to find so early the year (we went after Shasta--our 3rd attempt--on Memorial Day weekend of 1992), because nearly all of the target lakes would be frozen over. I could think of only one appropriate place to go (a trailless, lake of about 6200' elevation in NW Yosemite)--that "conditioning" trip was the one that started what amounted to the "golden age" of the long off trail backpacking fishing trips that Judy and I did so much of from 1992-1998. Until that "conditioning" trip we had not done a backpacking trip so exploratory, whereas after that we pretty much went whereever our imagination beckoned.

Shasta will always occupy a special place in the mountain annals of our family. It is always nice to see photos and reports of that place. The funny thing is that Judy, although she climbed over a dozen SPS peaks with me in the High Sierra, really never pointed to a peak and said "We MUST climb that one" except for Shasta. We had done a backpack trip to Big Blue Lake in the Russian Wilderness in 1990 and Judy felt that Shasta was just too fine a mountain for her not to climb.

[J ney]

Great TR!! Hope your arm is feeling better!

Shasta is losing snow fast... Had a nice view flying up to Seattle on Tuesday.