July 8, 2009, Mt. Shasta, Wintun Glacier

A persistent late spring in the Sierra Nevada has kept me and my attaché from doing extended excursions up until mid-june. While I usually have dismissed Shasta (admittedly foolishly) on my way from Seattle to Points South, I decided it was worth a closer look. While we could have gone and done some alpine rock foolishness in the Southern Sierra, there still too much snow to climb and too little to make skiing worth it (IMHO LOLZ).

In reality, Shasta is a skier's mountain. It sits high enough to get substantial snow so it has a lot of PNW characteristics however it is south enough to enjoy the good NorCal weather. The steeper sides are steep enough to keep your attention while offering extended no-bullshit 4000 foot fall lines of continuous pitch and angle. I also like the fact that access if cheap or free and regulation on the North and East sides is pretty minimal.

We and another car were the only cars at Brewer creek and they departed as we arrived. We camped at about 8500' feet in some unattractive sandy choss at the base of the lowest continuous band of snow from the summit.

The cold made my phone die and alarm failed so we were climbing by ~6 am, some time after sunrise. I would have estimated the temperatures to be in the upper 20's at 8k that night. A hard freeze made climbing easy and progress fast. As we neared the summit, heavy clouds began to form and we experienced some intermittent snow flurries. The top of the route veers left into a steeper couloir around 40 degrees for about 1000 feet. The corn up top was amazing but cloudy conditions were instituting a refreeze. We skied the top 1500 in zero visibility after waiting on the freezing cold and snowy summit area for almost an hour. Upon reaching the cloud bank, we were treated to miles of ripper corn and high speed carving. It was rad.

In summary, Shasta offers some of the best fall line I have experienced as well as ease of access for those who don't always feel the need for scary super gnar; just high-quality skiing.




Liz on the upper glacier.