Trip Report: Mt Shasta (Avalanche Gulch)

A group I mountaineer with had planned a trip to climb Mt Shasta in mid-May. I had a small procedure in April that I was recovering from that had some recurring pain weeks afterward. I made an attempt to climb South Sister a few weeks before my Mt Shasta attempt and a few days after South Sister I started feeling some pain. It’s the type of this I didn’t want to aggravate so the planning of my Mt Shasta trip needed to be after I was sure it was not going to occur while I was on the mountain. That and their trip was planned over my daughter’s birthday. I had to bow out of that trip but planned my own Shasta trip a little while after theirs. This meant it would be another solo attempt (if you haven’t yet, be sure to check out my non-summit South Sister trip report).

I don’t particularly like hiking and mountaineering by myself, but I’ve found that if I wait on other people to be ready, I’ll never get to go at all. Mt Shasta had been a dream of mine since I was a kid. I remember seeing it on a road trip when I was young and asking my dad if people could climb it; like, if it was able to be tamed. He said yes and I made a personal goal to climb it one day.

Mt Shasta has an interesting history and some mystery around it. It was famously climbed by John Muir (but, like, what mountain in California wasn’t climbed by him, right?). It also may have a community of giant aliens with beautiful hair living inside of it. That’s the legend anyway, but it makes for some interesting podcast listening on road trips or while climbing the mountain itself. Anyway, the mountain stands out from other mountains around it by its sheer prominence and its glaciers which can be seen from I-80 all year long. I could go on, but suffice it to say - it’s big and looks like an awesome mountain. It’s 14,180 feet making it California's fifth highest and second most prominent mountain.

Horse Camp.

I dropped my kiddos off at school and made the 4 hour drive to Mount Shasta (the town) to get lunch and a summit pass. The Fifth Season, the local mountaineering shop is great. For its size, it really has a great selection of new equipment, clothes, and rental gear. They can literally outfit an entire climb of the mountain in-house. I stopped and grabbed a burger and a beer and hit the road up the mountain. I parked right in front of the Bunny Flat trailhead, filled out my permit, and headed up toward Horse Camp.

Looking up from 50/50.

Horse Camp is 1.7 miles up a well-maintained path and is the gateway to Avalanche Gulch. It has an old cabin that houses information on the mountain and a picnic table, a spring with crystal clear potable water, and some compost toilets. It’s a little bit of luxury on the mountain and a place that a lot pf people stay at when heading up the mountain. I filled my water bottles, signed the guest book, chatted to a couple people and kept heading up.

Looking South from Helen Lake.

The way up to my camp area, Helen Lake, was unremarkable. The snow line was pretty high up so I wore my trainers until an area called 50/50 (which is another place a lot of people camp at). The reason people choose to camp at 50/50 instead of Helen Lake or High Camp is so they don’t have to lug all of their camping gear halfway up the mountain. Helen lake is not far from 50/50 but is an hour or more away when climbing up snow with heavy gear. Helen Lake makes for a better summit day and has better shelter from the wind. Anyway, I made it to Helen Lake finally and got set up.

Camping in snow on a mountain is quite different from regular camping. First, it’s really windy and the potential for huge gusts blowing your stuff away is pretty big. If it blows off the side of the mountain it’s the aliens’ now. You have to stake things down before you put the tent up and that means using snow stakes and burying them in the snow (instead of just pushing them into the snow. I used a combination of aluminum snow stakes and wood shims (the cost difference is drastic, but the efficiency is exactly the same - shims for the win!).

View from Helen Lake.

Once I got it staked down and the tent up, I had to melt snow to drink the next day. Since it was supposed to get in the single digits overnight, after making the water, I had to keep it from freezing. This means making warm water and lining my sleeping bag with the bottles. It’s a bit of a 2-fer though, it kept me warm and I kept the water warm. After this, I was ready to relax and wait for the sun to go down to get some sleep. I had planned to make friends with the other people camping at Helen Lake (the rangers expected around 60-80 people that night) but there was only one group of five people and they were already tucked away in their tents. I decided to put in my headphones and rest to the sound of my audiobook and wait for the sun to go down. It didn’t get dark until after 10, which sucked. Between that and the water bottles which took up precious room in my sleeping bag, I didn’t get much sleep.

Alpine start.

I woke up at 2:00am for an alpine start of 3:00. I got ready, ate breakfast, and waited for the group to start up the mountain so I could follow them and use their footsteps like a long set of stairs. They were apparently waiting for me to do the same. I decided at 3:45 that it was better to get going up the mountain by myself than let the snow get softer, so I started up the hill. The group were about 5 minutes behind me and stayed behind the whole time.

Working my way up as the sun rose.

Above Helen Lake is a snow wall. At the top is an unmistakable crag of red cliffs called the Red Banks. Just below these, lies The Heart, a short ridge that pokes out over the water and splits the snow wall. The traditional path is to go right at The Heart and then decide if you are going to go the steeper, more direct way straight through the Red Banks or to go right at the Red Banks and follow the path around The Thumb (a large rock that sticks out like an index finger). Either of these routes are probably cool. I went left at The Heart. This is the wrong way. It’s much steeper and puts you at the end of the Red Banks that have few openings and none are snow covered.

A look down the ice-covered chute.

After following the cliffs and trying to find the least committing way up the cliffs, I finally found a chute that seemed manageable. It was ice-covered, but had a curve to the wall where I could stop a slide should I need to. I climbed the 20 feet up the chute with my ice ax. This is known as mixed alpine climbing and I had never done it before… so that was neat. When I came out the top, I was standing at the bottom of Misery Hill. Who names these things?

View from the top of the Red Banks.

Misery Hill blocks the view of the summit, so once you’ve managed to climb the hundreds of vertical feet up the snow wall, you look up and see another hill you have to climb. It was only partially covered in snow and had switch-backs all the way up, so I used those. It wasn’t so bad.

Token summit photo.

Once I reached the top of Misery Hill, I was only about 15 minutes from the summit. Due to the debacle of going left at The Heart instead of right, I was ahead of my schedule, so I stopped and had second breakfast. While eating some tuna, frozen tortillas, and frozen gummy bears, a few people passed me. I got up and made the final push to the summit and was the 5th person to summit that day, the other 4 people were up there with me. I had somehow started first up the mountain, made a huge mistake, took a half hour break, and still could have been first to summit, if I cared that much. I was happy to summit with a few people who seemed genuinely excited that I made it. It was awesome.

Summit register.

We spent about half an hour at the summit block during which time the other group from Helen Lake made it up. We all celebrated together and headed down. We hiked down Misery Hill, through the Red Banks (which looked much easier than the way I went), and glissaded down to Helen Lake. I packed up and headed back down, stopping at Horse Camp to get a quick refill on water. I grabbed another burger and a beer and headed home.

Rock formation on summit.

A few thoughts on the trip:

• This was my first successful solo climb of a major US mountain.

• I made every checkpoint along the way up and down within 15 minutes of my goal time.

• My Patagonia R2 fleece is the best piece of clothing I have ever purchased.

• The La Sportiva Trango Tech boots are warm enough for Mt Shasta when using a vapor barrier and a hand warmer in each boot. My feet were never cold.

Green is my route, black is the main route.