Trip Report: Mt Shasta (Hotlum Glacier Left Ice Gully)
- blindsaint
- Aug 9, 2023
- 6 min read
Last year I missed my mountaineering group’s Mt Shasta trip because it was over my daughter’s birthday. They climbed the most commonly ascended route - Avalanche Gulch - on the West side of the mountain. I decided to make a solo attempt the following week and was successful. This event was huge for me for three reasons: first, because it had been a dream since I was a kid to climb Mt Shasta; second, because I was able to successfully climb it solo (after failing a solo attempt on South Sister just two weeks before); and third, because it showed me how terrible much of my gear was. It was the first of many defining moments in my climbing career.
This year I was able to climb Mt Shasta with my mountaineering group. We climbed the North side of the mountain on a much more technical route via the Hotlum Glacier. To up the ante, we took the left ice gully option, a multi-pitch ice wall just above the bergschrund (where the top of the glacier breaks apart from the headwall, leaving a large crevasse). This route is possibly the most technical route on the mountain, involving glacier travel, avoiding crevasses, climbing a steep exposed snow slope, navigating around the bergschrund, and climbing the ice wall itself.
Our mountaineering group consists of a group of guys planning to climb Denali in 2025. We are each in different stages of our mountaineering careers and are part of multiple mountaineering associations and outdoor groups. This trip was coordinated and led by Mountain Ascent Association, an active group of climbers who mostly do stuff around the Western US mountain ranges. The trip included a day of crevasse rescue training at the Hotlum ice falls, a trio of sites containing beautiful glacial ice structures that are constantly in a state of flux, collapsing on themselves and sometimes sending ice and rocks down the glacier.
Our first day was spent meeting up in the town of Mt Shasta to get summit passes, permits, and blue bags (for doing your business on the mountain) and then making our way to the Northgate trailhead. The road was snowed over and blocked by fallen trees that hadn’t been cleared yet so we had a little over a mile hike to get from where we parked our cars to the trailhead proper. We made camp at the trailhead because it had a restroom, flat dirt areas, and fire pits. We planned our route and enjoyed the fire and food that night, knowing the next day would be rough.
Day two was spent making our way around to the Hotlum Glacier. Being fresh, we opted to take the most direct way possible, up and over two foothills and across multiple areas of loose rock. It was a long and hard day. Besides being in worse shape than I would have liked, I had chosen to try and lighten my load by bringing my 45L backpack rather than my 65L one. The problem was that the 45L is a little too short for my torso and was not comfortable at all. It bruised my shoulders, making the rest of the trip painful. On top of that, I burned my nostrils, which is a strange sensation. At least the views were nice. We found a spot alongside the lower glacier to make camp, set about carving platforms for our tents in the dirt and rock that have slid from the top of the mountain, and got settled in. Luckily, our campsite had running water coming from the glacier nearby so we did not have to melt snow for water.
On the third day, we roped up for glacier travel and went up the mountain to the icefalls. They are amazing to look at from afar but are even cooler close up. We also practiced our crevasse rescue skills. This day was sort of the fun day, as it wasn’t physically challenging and we had a lot of time to joke and talk while setting up our systems. I knocked some of the rust off from my decade in search and rescue and really had a blast going down into the crevasse. I’ve been lowered into a lot of confined spaces before, but none compared to how pretty it was to be inside a crevasse. That evening, we made our plans for our summit attempt and went to the tents early for an alpine start.
I think I got an hour of sleep that night. I tossed and turned and listened to my audiobook to try and fall asleep. When the alarm sounded at 1am, we all groaned ourselves to life. We geared up, did a few final checks, roped up into our rope teams, and headed up the mountain. I’ll admit that the first couple hours, I doubted that I would make it and seriously thought about turning around. The higher we got, the less that was an option due to the risk of a crevasse fall. Besides the doubt that distracted me from the otherwise beautiful sites, I also was battling waves of nausea. It would come on, stay for a minute or two, and then go for another ten minutes or so. I’ve never had that issue at altitude before, but perhaps it had something to do with my lack of sleep and overall exhaustion. At any rate, I continued with my team.
We aimed to arrive at the bergschrund at dawn so we would be able to see better while going up the ice wall. When the day gets warm, the ice starts to melt and crevasse and rock/ice fall danger becomes greater, so mountaineers often do much of their climbing at night or early in the morning, especially when lower on the mountains. We nailed our time goal and were rewarded with awesome views and a hefty break at the bergschrund while we switched our ropes to a vertical climbing configuration. Our group leader (and founder of Mountain Ascent Association) began climbing the ice wall, which turned out to be more soft snow than ice. While still challenging and exposed, climbing snow is quite a bit different than climbing ice as it is less technical and easier to maintain a good speed. The ice wall is multi-pitch, and we climbed it in two normal pitches before using a running belay form of climbing. I would guess to pitch the whole thing would have been about 5 pitches, though I am writing this a few months after climbing it. Still, it was high adventure (pun intended) and a blast to climb. At the top, we took a break to grab a snack before making a very slow ascent up a section of very loose rock.
Every summit is unique, but the summit of Mt Shasta is a strange natural crown of volcanic rock that is extremely recognizable. This route brought us on the opposite side of the summit block than the Avalanche Gulch route does and really, you don’t know you’re at the top until you’re a couple hundred feet from the summit block. I think it was a way better approach, with the worst part by far being the short loose rock section above the wall. We took our pictures at the summit, signed the register, ate some chocolate, and decided it was time to head back down. We would descend the much easier Hotlum/Bolum glacier route and then wrap around to our camp below the icefalls.
There are a lot of clichés about how the summit is only halfway when climbing. In my experience, most descents are the worst part of the trip because you really just want to get back to camp. When I climbed the Avy Gulch route the year before, I climbed, descended, packed up camp, hiked back to the car, and drove home all in the same 20-hour day. This time, we were spending the night at camp and hiking out the next day. This descent was different than usually for me because maybe 500 feet below the summit, I lost a crampon. I was the last person in our group and we had gone through a particularly soft part of snow where I post-holed and slid down quite a bit of it (after the first few people walk across the snow, it becomes less and less strong). At some point, I lost my crampon without noticing. We ended up short-roping me down on a leash with my one crampon leading the way. It was a pain, but we still made pretty decent time back to camp.
The next day we hiked out. We decided to take a different route out than we had taken to get there to try and avoid some climbing sections, but as usual, it seemed like it took way longer than getting up. Once at the cars, we cleaned up and drove to Yaks in Dunsmuir, CA for burgers, beers, and high-fives. We then made the 4-hour drive back home where I took a quick shower and headed to work for a night shift. It was a big leap in my mountaineering career and one that I won’t soon forget.
Comments