May 29-30, 2004, Shasta
5/29/04
US elsewhere
2724
3
Had plans for the spearhead traverse but the soggy northwest forecast forced us to change plans...pointing the van south instead of north for the long weekend.
Just as we had hoped, as we crossed the border into California the clouds were left behind and Shasta welcomed us to the land of corn snow.
Despite a crowded parking lot and reports of 300 folks camped on the Avalanche Gulch route, we traversed over a few ridges and left the crowds behind to play on the slopes around hidden valley, the west face/gullies and slopes of casaval ridge. Nasty wind and funky snow up high kept most of us from hiking to the top, as we were more interested in yoyoing the perfect corn snow between 11,000 and 9000 till all we could do was collapse on the warm rocks at camp and work on our sunburns.
Just as we had hoped, as we crossed the border into California the clouds were left behind and Shasta welcomed us to the land of corn snow.
Despite a crowded parking lot and reports of 300 folks camped on the Avalanche Gulch route, we traversed over a few ridges and left the crowds behind to play on the slopes around hidden valley, the west face/gullies and slopes of casaval ridge. Nasty wind and funky snow up high kept most of us from hiking to the top, as we were more interested in yoyoing the perfect corn snow between 11,000 and 9000 till all we could do was collapse on the warm rocks at camp and work on our sunburns.
Great choice. The terrain surrounding Hidden Valley is varied and uncrowded. Did Mike join you for the trip ?
I have a question about this route option (I am hoping to get down to Shasta in a couple of weeks). If you go that far W, on W side of Casaval, does that mean that you'd have to climb a bunch of rotten rock etc if you chose to try to go higher than 11000 and towards the summit? Or are there lines between Left of Heart variation and Cascade Gulch that go high on the mountain w/o being interrupted by Casaval Ridge proper and related bands of rotten rock?
Also, every report I've seen recently on the S side routes has indicated that there's little or no value in carrying the skis higher than maybe 11000, it was all iced out (eerie similarity to reports on Adams BTW but with multiple thousands of feet subtracted from the elevations of where ice started). However, Amar's report from Bolam on the NE side didn't sound like he ran into the kind of ice that would make skiing no fun. Is this icing-up a common thing for the S side routes but not elsewhere? And if so, maybe the longer approaches even though there's less vertical still covered by snow on the E or NE routes would be worth it, if you consider that the top 3000' feet of the snow on the S side routes might be worthless?
I don't really know much about Shasta and would appreciate some beta ... all I know is that it is big and snowy ;)
Also, every report I've seen recently on the S side routes has indicated that there's little or no value in carrying the skis higher than maybe 11000, it was all iced out (eerie similarity to reports on Adams BTW but with multiple thousands of feet subtracted from the elevations of where ice started). However, Amar's report from Bolam on the NE side didn't sound like he ran into the kind of ice that would make skiing no fun. Is this icing-up a common thing for the S side routes but not elsewhere? And if so, maybe the longer approaches even though there's less vertical still covered by snow on the E or NE routes would be worth it, if you consider that the top 3000' feet of the snow on the S side routes might be worthless?
I don't really know much about Shasta and would appreciate some beta ... all I know is that it is big and snowy ;)
it is continuous snow from the high point of the main west gully on the west face at around 13,300ft? down to hidden valley. I have no idea how quickly it melts out, but it looked like plenty of snow up high while we were there. There were bands of rock between the various gullies, but thats just walking across small sections of choss, no actual climbing obstacles.
The one fellow in our group who opted to summit instead of yoyo said that the snow at around 13,000ft was starting to soften around mid-afternoon...if the wind hadn't been howling, it may have softened more.
We chose to head to the sw side of shasta after getting some beta that as of last week the skiing on the hotlum bolum side wasn't all that good compared to areas that were getting direct solar heating.
The one fellow in our group who opted to summit instead of yoyo said that the snow at around 13,000ft was starting to soften around mid-afternoon...if the wind hadn't been howling, it may have softened more.
We chose to head to the sw side of shasta after getting some beta that as of last week the skiing on the hotlum bolum side wasn't all that good compared to areas that were getting direct solar heating.
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