July 16, 2005, Shasta H-W Ridge

Yet another brief TR about Shasta. :)  The Hotlum-Wintun Ridge is still in excellent condition despite some very hot weather this past week.  It was over 90 degrees in Mt Shast city with a 16,000 ft freezing level.  There are still no suncups on the route and you can ski to about 7500 ft or about 300 vertical ft above the car.  This was a real quick trip.  I went with my brother-in-law from Seattle who is a recent backcountry ski convert.  This was his first time up Shasta.  We left from my house in Chehalis just south of Olympia Thur evening and after stopping for some sleep on the way down, arrived in Shasta Fri morning.  After lunch in Shasta we drove to the Brewer Creek trailhead and hung out there the rest of the day.  To save time and headaches a GPS is very handy here.  I noticed Lowell mentioned wandering around trying to find his car in a previous post.  Fri afternoon we GPS marked the position of the car and the lowest continuous snow point.  We hiked up to the snow at about 7500ft and then finally to about 8200 ft to kill time, acclimatize, and to find the best entrance into the multiple fingers of snow that descend the mountain to allow us to ski as far as possible to the car.  We were also able to walk cross country directly from the car to this low snow point and avoid the numerous switchbacks on the trail during our moonless 1 AM jaunt through the woods.  Cutting cross-country seems to be the norm at this trailhead according to some of the locals I've talked to.  We rested with some occasional sleep in the car Fri evening and hit the trail about 1:15 AM Sat morning.  Due to the very warm temperatures I wanted to be on the top by 9 AM.  We used the GPS to go directly to the snow and skinned up to about 12000 ft.  There we switched to crampons to traverse over to the final pitch the top.  The early morning sun had already really warmed up this east facing slope.  We reached the summit at 8:45 AM.  The summit was extremely windy with a wind from the west so we didn't stay long.  The ski down was as smooth and fast as I've ever seen it, even to the lower elevations.  We got back to the car at about 10:30 AM, packed up and headed home to WA.  This is a great route to do as a 9-10 hr day trip.  The weather at this time of year allows you to have next to nothing in the pack making the 7000 ft descent a rip. Even the skiing on the rougher snow at the low elevations was enjoyable.  Maybe time for one more trip in July and then where to go in August... :)