I Took My Kids Mountaineering On Mt Shasta And They Didn't Die!

TR Mt Shasta (Clear Creek) w/ Kids

When I talk about my kids climbing or hiking, most people picture playground rock walls and trails at the local parks or easy mountain hikes. When I tell them about my climbing wall in my living room, or my kids belaying each other while rock climbing, or backcountry trips bush-whacking through heather-covered boulder fields, they think I'm nuts. My kids are not the average American kids though. We don't have video games in our house. My kids read so much that we have to limit their reading so they can engage with real humans. My kids helped me build the two story play structure in my backyard and assist me in resetting the holds on our home bouldering wall by climbing up with Allen wrenches, bolts, or holds in their mouths or climbing one handed to hold these things. My kids are different.

I've been telling them I'd take them up Mt Shasta since this past Spring and had hoped to get on the mountain at the end of August, but my work schedule had me working at the hospital every weekend. The last weekend of September was the first and only weekend I could make it happen, so we marked the calendar and began to prepare our gear.. I spent three years collecting gear for myself and have most everything I need for a Denali trip I'm planning in a couple of years. The kids had no technical gear and little gear or clothes that would work. With a small budget, we collected what we could and I supplemented with some extra pieces of my own. I chose the Clear Creek Route on Shasta because it is the least technical, but having never done it myself and planning the trip a couple of months in advance, I didn't know if there would be a snow slope, so I came up with a crampon solution that we didn't end up needing. If I had it all to do over again, I would have used that money to buy them more technical puff jackets, but no gear change would have changed our outcome.

Without kid-sized backpacks, I sized down a couple of my smaller backpacks to fit my kids. It worked for them on this trip, but I'll be looking at some new backpacks for them as a Christmas present (currently, Deuter is the only company making technical backpacks for kids). My son (7) took a Lowe Alpine 21L summit pack (we use this for snacks and water while hiking as a family). My daughter carried my 35L Alps Mountaineering pack (which I used on my 4-day Hotlum Ice Gully trip earlier this year). Their pack weights were 10 and 12lbs (respectively) while my 75L Deuter pack was filled to the brim and weighed 55lbs. I now know what a porter feels like looking at their clients with their day packs on while carrying heavy loads. The kids carried their clothes, a 1L Smart water bottle, some bars, and their sleeping bags and sleeping pads.

The Clear Creek Route on Mt Shasta is the least technical route on the mountain, but it's not easy. In good conditions and weather, it is considered a "hiking route", though only because of the hundreds of switchbacks on the steep slopes. It still is a free-standing mountain creating its own weather and that still makes it a mountaineering route. For those who think it's easy, there was a helicopter rescue of some climbers on this route a week before we made our attempt. It's not easy or hikable and its safety rating is more of a product of weather, good decisions, and luck by the climbers. Often, it is not safe at all to climb. That said, in late Summer, it is also not usually snow covered so it made it a great first mountaineering trip for me to bring my kiddos along.

We left home at 6 a.m. on Saturday and were headed up the trail with wilderness permits, summit passes, sunscreen, and smiles by 11:30 a.m. We got to the Clear Creek springs to make camp at 4:30 p.m. Camping on this route is mostly near the springs that feed the creek, since it's the last reliable water source of the route (without having to melt snow, that is). We filled up our water and chose to camp above the springs in a thicket of trees, preferring to have walls of bushes and trees around to block the wind. This turned out to be clutch for us and I pity the few people in the tents with little rock walls around their tents as they must have had a rough night that night. We pitched the tent, explored the area, set up our sleeping bags, and had hummus, cheese, tortillas, and Fritos for dinner. We also called Mom and talked to her, easing her mind quite a bit. I gave the kids a choice of getting up at 2 a.m. (a true alpine start) or 5 a.m. with a hard turn around time of 10 a.m. with either option. The kids chose 2 a.m. without any hesitation. They were committed to the true mountaineering experience. So we listened to a podcast about Greek heroes before going to sleep, and lied down for a mostly restless night.

The kids, who are usually groggy and need some coaxing to get up before 6 a.m., were up and ready in minutes when my alarm went off at 2. I brought my 2-person mountaineering tent, so we only had enough room for one person at a time to get dressed. Once both of them had put on all of their layers, I sent them out of the tent so I could get clothes on too. We left camp at 3:15, the weather was windy and cool, but not bad. Once on the ascent route, going back and forth on the switchbacks, the wind began blasting us with sand. It sucked, but we pressed on. Slowly, the sand became mixed with snow, then sleet, then hail. This was all miserable, but the kids were champs.

Any time we could find a big rock to take a break behind, we stopped for a minute and adjusted our outfits. We found a good place to take a real break and waited for a bit in hopes that the wind would die down. I stood blocking the wind from the kids, getting covered in wet sand in the process. Having the better clothing for this, I was fine, but I began to fear that if the kids were getting too wet and that if we proceeded up the mountain where it would get colder, that we might be pushing into hypothermia risks. They were wearing fleece jackets, puff jackets, and rain coats, but their pants were not waterproof. We kept climbing until my son got knocked over by a gust of wind. I had the kids get down until the wind stopped gusting and we moved off the path to some rocks to talk. I told them the bad news: we needed to bail before we got hurt.

Green: Our path from camp / Blue: The rest of the route (roughly)

The kids didn't love the decision to bail, but they accepted it. I told them I would bail even if I wasn't with them (which I think eased their minds). The wind was getting worse, with no sign that it would stop any time soon. There was a storm in the forecast for the following day but it looked like it was hitting early. If it was that storm (it was), I knew it wasn't going to let up. I also told them that there’s never any shame in turning around for weather because it is completely out of our control. We had a weather window that had closed prematurely; that’s just life in the mountains.

We made it back to the tent and jumped inside to rest until daylight. The wind continued all morning and as we were leaving, we could see the mountain was dusted with new snow. We saw other people bail from the mountain as well, further showing my kids that it was not a lack of faith in their ability that made me make the call to turn around, but that the weather was just too much. We packed up and left camp with our hearts filled and smiles on our faces again. The kids really enjoyed the whole experience and recovered super quickly from the disappointment of not getting higher. I know they both wanted to summit, but our goal was to see how they did on a mountain and on this trip, they both did excellent. Even more so, they both want to do more of it!

For me mountaineering is about the experience, not the summit. It's the gear, the planning, the pushing yourself further than you felt you could go, the comradery, the intensity, the stories. It's coming home with another feather in my cap. The kids learned more from this trip than they would have if we had perfect weather and summitted. They can confidently say that they climbed Mt Shasta, got turned around due to a storm, and made it safely home. They also carried their own clothes and sleep systems, which was impressive. We’re currently looking at other endeavors for this winter before making another attempt on Mt Shasta sometime next year.

3 things I learned from this trip:

• My kids need better gear. Buying technical gear for kids is a challenge and a bit of an investment. How often are they going to be able to wear some of the clothes you get them before they grow out of them? Can you find quality technical gear for kids? Sure, there’s plenty of ski equipment for kids, but ski gear is heavy and made for resort skiing, not for traveling distances. I am currently looking at buying women’s technical gear in size XS. This search brings up another issue in that there’s not as great of a selection for women as there is for men. This is a different discussion entirely, and one that I’m not the best person to discuss, but it is a factor nonetheless.

• I need to work on being ok with my own decisions. This was the right call to make and I made it and for that I am proud. I waffled a bit afterwards, mostly because I didn’t want to let my kids down. Part of me wishes we would have made a second attempt at 8 a.m. once the weather backed down, but I know we wouldn’t have gone far before the 10 a.m. turnaround time. I felt validated when I saw the other groups had turned around too, but I shouldn’t need to get that validation. I’d like to get better at that personally.

• My kids are resilient. We work on resiliency with our kids intentionally because their life is pretty easy and you build resilience through overcoming adversity. We do things like trying to spend a couple minutes in a cold shower before warming it up, and not carrying them when we are on family walks and they get tired. We push them (safely) to places they don’t necessarily want to be so they can learn that they can survive being slightly uncomfortable for a little bit. When we travel, they carry their own backpacks with their things, eat whatever we order them, and experience life how the people in those countries experience it. What it has made them, is tough. That toughness allows them to do things that most people can’t, like hike longer distances, take polar plunges, hike through jungles, and live life to the fullest.

3 things that worked well:

• Training with packs paid off. Having spent a month with heavier backpacks over the Summer on vacation, the kids were ready and able to carry a bit more weight than what is recommended for their size. They complained a little (we all do), but they refused to quit. They came back wanting to train with packs more so they can feel more comfortable next time.

• My mountain food plan is really working out well. This summer I came up with a system of a few ingredients that I can live on for a few days happily and that will sustain energy. It also checks other boxes like: not needing to be heated; not needing refrigeration; providing protein, fat, and sodium; being something I like to eat regularly; being calorie-dense foods. The “system” is composed of: tortillas, hummus, cheese, Frito’s, and granola bars of some sort. I put cheese and/or hummus in a tortilla, sprinkle it with crunched up chips, roll it into a burrito and eat it. The bars are strictly for eating on the move. This, with the occasional mashed potato pouch or miso soup mix, will (and has) sustain me for at least 4 days before I start getting tired of it. I added a bag of beef jerky for the kiddos, since it’s their favorite trail snack.

• Having a positive attitude. My wife was reasonably nervous as this is the first night she has been away from the kids (with the exception of a couple nights in the hospital when she had our third child), but she didn’t let the nerves stop her from being positive around the kids. Our collective excitement leading up to, during, and after the trip and kept the stoke up for the kids. Taking my family up into the mountains has been a dream of mine, so I’ve been having to hold back my stoke, but now my kids have the fire for the mountains that I have and the stoke is palpable in our house now.