Mount Shasta - Avalanche Gulch

Carl, Adam, Justin, and I summited 14,150' Mt. Shasta in northern California!

I picked up the guys from Sacramento airport and we went straight to the climb. We went up the Avalanche Gulch route. We left 7000' Bunny Flat trailhead at 2pm.

Snow conditions were almost perfect with the snow starting right at the trailhead, just a little bit slushy down low. It was tshirt weather to start! The climb to our camp at Helen Lake (10300') was nice and easy, we arrived around 5:30pm. We set up camp, made water (boiled snow), had dinner, and got a few hours sleep.

Our summit push started at 3:30am the next day. I think we were supposed to leave earlier. Perfect clear and calm conditions. From Helen Lake it's a sleep slog up to Thumb Rock at almost 13000', it took us 3hrs. The snow had crusted overnight but was still soft underneath. It was easier to walk in others' footsteps but many had filled in, so a mix of kicking steps and finding sections where you could follow a path. I was using my new Grivel G12 crampons which were amazing.

We timed this photo perfectly - that's the 14150' shadow of Mt. Shasta!

There's a lot more mountain to climb! Misery Hill and the summit are another 1400' up.

Misery Hill wasn't as bad as the name suggests, we took a wrap-around path instead of going straight up. The wind was picking up. The top was cold and very windy. We summited at 8:15am and were almost immediately blanketed in fog. Maybe five minutes after we took this picture it was whiteout conditions. We didn't stick around.

The return to camp at Helen Lake sucked. The fog got thicker and thicker and the wind picked up to a steady 15-20mph gusting 30-40mph. We took a long 30-min break at Thumb Rock which was a mistake, my jacket and gloves had gotten wet and I was very cold.

The climb down to Helen Lake was the worst. Ice pellets pelted us. I got knocked down once and had to self-arrest. I was super cold and had to keep moving, but a lot of the snow crust had melted, so it was steep slushy downclimbing. We tried glissading but it was too steep and things got out of control quickly. Justin and I had a little mini adventure!

We were back at camp by noon and spent at least an hour in the tents warming up. We tore down, packed up, and from there it was easy, quick descent to Horse Camp, and then a looong off-route slog through the trees back to the car.

We got very lucky on the weather. I don't think we would have attempted to summit if we had been an hour later. It was hard to figure out where to go on the way down (thank goodness for Garmin track-back) and would have been dangerous without local knowledge. The climb was excellent though, 10/10 would climb again.