May 4, 2010, Mt. Shasta, Avalanche Gulch

Our trip started May 2 at about 3AM with a drive from Seattle after my friend Riley had flown in from Colorado the day before.  Our original intent was to ski Rainier this week, but the weather wasn't very cooperative in WA.  So, we took off early to arrive in the town of Mt. Shasta in the early afternoon with perfect sun, and a sizeable lenticular cloud covering the summit.  Winds were high, and reports of gusts up to the mid 90s had us wondering if we had made a bad trip choice.  Since the winds were supposed to taper over the next 48 hrs, we stuck with our plan to bivy that night above Horse Camp.  We started up the Green Butte ridge, and ended up dropping down into the Gulch to dig in at about 8100' in a grouping of trees.  We had great protection from ended up being persistent high winds throughout the night.

An alarm was set for 3AM, and since it was so windy overhead, we slept until 7.  At that time, winds were obviously still to high to get much further up the mountain, so we headed for the car.

Fortunately, the low elevations were more calm, and we ended up with great touring conditions in the Castle Lake area on the other side of town.  Highly recommended if you ever find yourself with an extra day in the Shasta area during the spring.

So, the evening of May 3 we settled on the Best Western, ate, drank, and planned to get up with the intent of skiing Shastina the next morning if the skies looked okay and it wasn't too windy.  We got up at 4:30 and were skinning from Bunny Flats at 6AM.  The winds had settled and the summit looked relatively calm, so we decided to head up Avalance Gulch. The snow level that day was forecasted to be 4900', which would give us the ability to stay high on the mountain later without as much risk of triggering wet slabs.

By 9:15 we made Helen Lake, and the higher elevations continued to look calm.  The skies were cloudless.  There was one climber with skies on his pack who we watched ascend through the Red Cliffs as we made it to about 11K.  Saw his crampon tracks here and there all the way up to 13K, but didn't see him descend the Gulch.  We got our ski crampons out a little below Lake Helen, kept them on until switching to boot crampons at 11500', and went back to skis with ski crampons from 13K to 14K.  We saved some time by picking a direct line through the Red Cliffs, but going was pretty slow by 13500 thanks to relatively intense winds coming from W-NW. 

By the time we got to the very base of the last short pyramid to the summit, with our altimeters both reading just over 14K, beaten down by relentless wind, and lacking a well-protected area for a break, we planned a quick change to boot crampons and to get the summit while leaving our skis there.  However, our friend Pete was down at the car (not feeling great in the morning, he headed back for the car from Lake Helen), and it was already 3PM.  We made the tough decision to leave the summit for another day.

The ski conditions were okay above 12500, with smooth styrofoam-like sections that were somewhat interesting to link together.  Below the Red Cliffs, we had very skiable, smooth windswept sections of 800-1000 feet at a time that felt great.  No corn until below 10K, but no hard crust anywhere the entire 7000 vertical we skied.  We were back at the car about 40 minutes after starting the descent.  Awesome day overall.  Well worth the 17 hours in the car (round trip of course).