Mt. Shasta - Summit via Avalanche Gulch

Dates: April 3-5, 2009 Duration: 3 days, 2 nights Mileage: TBD Group Members: Nick McGuire, 7 others from OA, and 2 Shasta Mountain Guides Pack Weights: Unknown (varied each day) Notes: This trip was a course offered through Outdoor Adventures at UC Davis as a Mountaineering Guide School. We were given a special reduced rate and the trip was run by Shasta Mountain Guides. We had am AMAZING experience with SMG! Our guides were Dane and Keith...two of the coolest guys out there and the greatest guides ever. Route Map Available! Day 1: (~1000 ft ascent, ~1.7 miles) After meeting at the Fifth Season rental store in the the town of Mount Shasta at 9AM and going over gear requirements, paperwork, meeting our guides, etc., we headed up to the Bunny Flat Trailhead in the late morning. After dividing up group gear and another meeting we left the parking lot just before noon to snowshoe out to Horseshoe Camp. It was sunny and clear but windy and it began to snow soon after leaving. We reached the Sierra Club cabin by early afternoon and went inside for lunch as the weather conditions had begun to deteriorate further. After lunch we headed a few hundred meters to the west of the cabin and found a good location in the trees to setup camp. Spent the better part of the afternoon building a bomber winter camp before heading out for our first snow school. We found a decently steep slope just north of our camp where we went over ice axe basics and general mountaineering footwork including the rest step and different styles of climbing and traversing and how to teach these skills to beginners. We then finished up our snow school session with some ice axe self-arrest and glissading practice before heading back to camp for dinner. Made dinner, relaxed, refilled water bottles with melted snow, disccused plans for the next day and were finally in our tents between 8 or 9 PM. Slighly chilly during the night but not too bad. Day 2: (~2000 ft ascent, ~2.5 miles) Woke up around 7:30AM and had a leisurely breakfast. A little bit of frost in the tent and damp sleeping bags....should have ventilated the tent a bit more. Geared up and headed out a little while later towards Giddy Giddy Gulch. Reached the base of the gulch by mid-morning and switched to crampons before beginning our ascent. Practiced the different steps we had learned the day before and reached the saddle between the gulch and Casaval Ridge by mid-day. Ate a long leisurely lunch before beginning our second snow school session focusing on roped travel. We went over the basic knots required for setting up a rope team and then broke off into 3 groups to practice traveling as a rope team. After this we then split into 2 groups and practiced team ice axe arresting with both participant and lead falls. Headed back down the mountain around 4:30PM by way of Avalanche Gulch. From the saddle we were able to practice our first lengthy glissade and I discovered the joys of "boot-skiing" or the standing glissade for the first time which was extremely fun. Made dinner when we got back to camp, and had a lengthy discussion about the next days summit attempt. Our final conclusions included getting up sometime around 1-2 AM and leaving our avalanche gear behind given the safe snow conditions we had experienced. Went to bed just before 9PM.

Day 3: (~6300 ft ascent, ~10 miles) Woke up at 2AM and had breakfast and a hot drink. Packed up our gear for the summit ascent, put on our crampons and and were out of camp just after 3AM. Very bright moon so headlamps were barely necessary. Got into a great climbing rhythm and reached Helen Lake a few hours later via the Avalanche Gulch route. Ditched our trekking poles and put on our climbing harnesses, breaking up into two 5-person rope teams for the rest of the day. Continued to climb up Avalanche Gulch through the Red Banks which we reached just as the sun was breaking over the north side of the mountain. Continued climbing up the typical route over Misery Hill and onto the summit plateau. Felt great especially with the breaks we had been taking every 1-1.5 hours. Continued on from the summit plateau to the summit itself which we reached at about 12:20PM. Winds at this point had been pretty constant at 30+ mph gust a bit higher but were definitely tolerable. Spent 40 minutes on the summit before heading down. Plunge-stepped or traversed our way all the way down to the base of Misery Hill at our own paces, free from the rope teams. Regrouped again at the top of the Red Banks and continued down a little further before we began glissading down the mountain. Conditions were good for glissading but not perfect so it was often a mixture of plunge-stepping and glissading. Regrouped again at Helen Lake where two of our group members skied down while the rest of us either glissaded, plunge stepped, or boot-skied down the mountain. Made it back to camp right at 4PM. We immediately began striking camp and packing up before snowshoeing back to the parking lot which we reached sometime around 5PM. Gear exploded and profusely thanked our amazing guides, who had beer stashed in their vehicle for us, before heading down to the town of Mount Shasta to return more gear before our long drive home.