The Mozmonkey Blog

This is a follow-up to the post I wrote last year with a lot of new information I learned from my last two climbs. Be sure to read the original post first to get a good overview about the mountain and the route.

The Tale of Two Trips

My plan was to attempt to climb Shasta twice in one week in May, with a few days in between to recover. It didn’t go entirely as well as I had planned, but I did learn a lot. Here’s how both trips went.

Trip 1

Note: The events in the first trip are not representative of a common climb up Shasta, but the risks are present. Be prepared and wear a helmet.

The first trip was with my friends Tracy and Karen and we decided to do a three day journey starting with the first night at horse camp, to acclimate to the elevation, and then to base camp at Lake Helen the next day. Summit morning was extremely difficult; there was ~40mph winds up at Red Banks, which kept dusting the climbers with snow and once in awhile pelting small ice balls at them. About an hour into the climb, at a 15 steps and stop pace, Karen started feeling hypothermic and couldn’t go any further. I told Tracy to keep going and I’d walk Karen back down to base camp and then catch up. After getting Karen into the tent and making sure she would be okay, I started back up the mountain, now at a ~35 steps and stop pace to catch up.

Before I caught up to her, and on one of the steeper parts of the ascent, I heard a climber up ahead yell “rock!” and everyone around me, including myself, dug our ice axes into the snow and crouched into safe fetal positions on the snow. About 3 second later I felt a medium size rock slam into my body. For the first few moments I went into shock and everything was a little slower and I was a bit dizzy. I went through the mental checklist: can I move my toes? Check. Am I still awake? Check. Still holding onto my ice axe? Check. I was lucky that the rock hit me square on the butt cheek, otherwise it could have been a much more serious issue.

After I composed myself and was sure that there weren’t any more falling rocks, I got up and caught up to Tracy close to Red Banks (see picture above). We continued over the ridge and started hiking up the next hill. The wind was insane and I was exhausted from trying to catch up to Tracy, not drinking/eating enough and still mentally recovering from the incident with the rock. Tracy’s was determined, but her camelback hose has froze and she had not been drinking or eating enough either. At that point I realized that getting to the summit and back to base camp wouldn’t be safe and we needed to turn around. (we weren’t even to Misery Hill yet) It’s always important to put the safety of the group ahead of hitting the summit. The mountain will still be there next year.

Trip 2

A few days later, with a huge bruise on my ass, I attempted the mountain with my Dad. The conditions couldn’t have been better — calm skies, no wind to worry about and a few clouds to keep base camp cool from the midday sun. We did the standard two-day trip, with one night at Helen Lake, and we were able to hit the summit without a hitch.

Training

Before you attempt the mountain be sure to do the proper training so that you can complete it safely. Last season I trained too hard, too fast and didn’t balance my muscle groups, which led to a bad back injury and a trip to the ER for a mild vasovagal episode from the pain. To prevent this, make sure when you work one muscle group at the gym you also build the opposite group. For example, if you are building your pectoral muscles (pecs), make sure you spend as much time on your shoulders (bench press followed by seated rows). When working your abs also strengthen your lower back. Do slow, clean reps and watch your form. If you don’t do this, you will injure yourself!

Another good way to train is to find some good difficult hikes around your area and notice which muscles are weak on the hike and sore the next day. Those are the muscles you’ll want to strengthen at the gym. If you find that your calve muscles get tired easily or are really sore the next day, make sure to concentrate on building those muscles between hikes. Keep doing this until your entire body feels strong during and after the hike. In the San Francisco Bay area I’ve found that Mission Peak is a great mountain to train on. Whichever trail you pick for training, make sure it has a decent elevation gain. For example, Mission Peak has about 2000 feet elevation gain.

Caffeine

Another good trick that I tried before Shasta was to give up coffee three weeks before the climb. This lowered my tolerance to caffeine so that when I had coffee the morning of the climb and in food supplements like Gu it was far more effective. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I had that much energy. When we reached base camp, after a full day of hiking, we still had the energy to build a large snow shelter, complete with walls.

My Dad did the same caffeine trick, so when we got to base camp on my second trip, we went to work improving the snow shelter with bigger walls and a breakfast nook. Not bad at 11,000 feet.

Altitude

One way to counter the affects of the high altitude is to get a prescription for Diamox, which you’ll need to start taking at least 24 hours before the climb. The standard dose is 240mg, which can cause you to urinate a lot, but studies show that taking 125mg (basically cutting the 240mg pill in half) is just as effective.

Here’s more information on altitude sickness, prevention and acclimation:
http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/safety/altitude.html

Talk to the rangers

The conditions on the mountain change daily and the rangers can alert you to things to look out for. Always talk to them and take their advice to ensure a safe trip. When you get your wilderness pass at the ranger station in town, ask them about the mountain, the climb, weather conditions and to show you their short mountain presentation.

When you’re on the mountain, make sure you ask similar questions to all the rangers you pass. Here’s a list of handy questions to ask:

• What are the current conditions like?
• Any avalanche dangers?
• What should do I do if:
  • I get caught in an avalanche?
  • someone yells “rock”?
• What is the best route up avalanche gulch?
• What should be our absolute turn around time on the summit ascent?
• How’s your day? Can I buy you a beer when we get off this mountain?

If you’re nice to the rangers, they’ll take care of you!

Pacing yourself

A lot of climbers will be tempted to push themselves as long as possible between breaks, but on the steep terrain and high altitude, this will wear you out really quickly. A good technique is to figure out an attainable number of steps between breaks and stick to it. When I was going up Red Banks my pace was about 35 steps per 15 - 30 second break. When we were on Misery Hill we adjusted it to 15 - 20 steps. Be sure to use some of your breaks to hydrate and consume solid nutrients, like Gu or trail mix. Counting off your steps will also give you something to concentrate on and off of how it looks like you’re not making any progress.

Turn around time

Hitting the summit is the goal of all the climbers on the mountain, but getting a late start or not turning around early enough can be dangerous. As the sun comes up and warms the mountain, it’ll turn nice solid ice to squishy snow and slides. It can make your decent more difficult and, at the worst, it can open up small crevasse or cause avalanches. Be sure to decide on an absolute turn around time for your ascent. If you don’t hit the summit by this time, you turn around — no exceptions. Ask the rangers what the turnaround time should be considering the current conditions. Ideally you should be back at base camp before noon.

Equipment

The number one piece of equipment you should have is a helmet! You can rent one pretty cheap at The Fifth Season in town. Many climbers will think they don’t need one, but if I didn’t have one and the rock had hit me on the head, I would have been dead. There’s no question about that. If that doesn’t convince you, last year climber died on the Avalanche Gulch route because she was not properly prepared.

Make sure the rest of your equipment is fitted right for you and balanced in your bag. Ask the friendly people at the sporting good store to help you with this. Wearing a backpack that is not fitted for your height and size will easily injure your back. Get your back measured so you can get the right size pack.

If you’re not carrying skis and there’s snow at Bunny Flats, be sure to rent snow shoes for the decent from base camp. Otherwise, you’ll be “post holing” (i.e. your feet will sink into the snow about a foot or more with each step) all the way down to your car and you shoes will be filled with freezing water.

Planning for 2010

For 2010, we’ll be trying a different approach on the ascent to base camp, we’re going to ski up! This is called Ski Randonnée, or Alpine Touring, in which you wear skis with specially designed downhill-like bindings that allows you to ascend like cross-country skis. Attaching a special fabric to the bottom, called climbing skins, prevents the skis from slipping backwards when you are going uphill. Then when you pack up base camp you remove the skins, clip down and ski all the way to your car.

UPDATE: I’ve written a follow-up post which contains a lot of new information and how my two 2009 trips went.

As 2009 rolled around I decided that this would be a great year to go backpacking up Mount Shasta again. I have attempted the mountain twice in the past and topped out (i.e. reached the summit) once. This year I’m organizing a group trip, which is why I’ve started planning so early and the reason for this post. Here I will outline my experience with the mountain and what to expect.

Not all the pictures I’ve included are mine. Here are the pictures from my Shasta trips in 2001 and 2002.

Mountain Stats

Location

Northern California (near the Oregon border)

Elevation at the top

14,179 ft

Trailhead

6,920 ft

Elevation Gain

7,259 ft

Trail Distance

~ 6 miles (averages to about 1,000 feet elevation gain per mile)

Nights on trail

1

Best time of year to climb

May to Mid July

Overview of a standard trip

Typically the climb and decent will take two days, although, some people do it in one.

Day 1 starts with a 4 - 6 hour hike from the parking lot up to Helen Lake (which is really just a glacier) where you setup base camp. The rest of the day is spent admiring the view, making food (yay, dehydrated meals!) and preparing your day pack for the next morning.

The summit ascent begins somewhere between 12 AM - 3 AM the next morning. You’ll want to start as early as possible, while the snow is still firm and solid, and get to red banks before the sun starts making it soft and slushy.

When you reach the summit stop to enjoy the view, regain your energy and prepare for the best part of the journey — glissading down the mountain! This literally means you will sit on your butt in the groove created by the people before you and slide down the entire mountain; stopping briefly at base camp to collect the rest of your gear. Not to worry, you will have your ice axe with you as a safety device that will help you regulate your speed down the mountain. Think of it as your hand brake.

So that’s it, 2 days to get to the top and and 3 - 4 hours down.

My First Attempt

Now that you know the basics, here are my experiences.

As long as I can remember my father has been telling me the story of when he was young and climbed Shasta with his friends from school. It always sounded like an exciting adventure and in 2001 I invited him to climb it with me. He spent months preparing. Hired a personal trainer, lost a lot of weight and really got prepared for the trip. I was 20 years old and thought I was in perfect shape and wouldn’t need to train or do anything to prepare. I mean, I’ve done hikes before, I went biking regularly, how hard could it be? That was my first mistake.

Our second mistake was to attempt the mountain sometime in August or September. At that time of year much of the snow has melted at the base of the mountain and you have to traverse up loose volcanic scree all the way to base camp. It was miserable, and I was seriously lagging behind my Dad.

The next morning we decided not to attempt the summit since the snow was melting and could cause falling rocks. And I was still exhausted from the day before.

My Second Attempt — Success!

The following year we decided to attempt it again with a better understanding of how to approach it. I was 21 years old now, so a lot wiser and as a bonus was legal to drink! (although that has nothing to do with the story)

This time I started training about 2 months prior to the climb by going to the local high school 2 or 3 nights a week and running the bleachers. That made all the difference in the world.

We also decided to go in June, so the snow on the mountain was almost at the trail head. This helps considerably by giving you enough traction to hike straight up the mountain without a lot of traversing.

We got to Helen Lake and the next morning started the ascent around 12 AM, while it was still dark. With our headlamps turned on and crampons on our boots we began the steep hike to the summit. The closer we got the thinner the air became. With the summit in view I would take about 5 to 10 steps and need to stop for a short break.

Reaching the top was extremely rewarding and provided a view that was worth every minute of the climb. It’s beyond description and pictures can’t come close to capturing it; you’re at the top of the world. From there you can look down at the giant shadow the mountain casts on the rest of the valley. In fact the entire hike provides scenic views you wont experience anywhere else.

Equipment

Most of the equipment you need can be rented. I would recommend buying a pair of comfortable boots that can easily be hiked in and support crampons. You’ll need an ice axe for safety, although there isn’t any vertical climbing along the route. Here’s a list of a few of the things you’ll need:

• 2 Backpacks: One to carry the supplies for base camp and a small day pack to carry to the summit.
• Warm clothes: Wearing layers is a good idea.
• Hiking boots that can support crampons.
• Ice axe. (rent)
• Helment: Optional, but a good idea. (rent)
• Tent: Light and made for snow and wind.
• Sleeping bag: Mummy bag made for backpacking and rated for very cold weather (-30° F).
• 2 Telemark poles: These are fancy hiking sticks.
• Camp stove and cooking supplies.
• Water filtering device. (You’ll be filtering melted snow for water at base camp)

If you go to a good mountaineering shop they can help you pick out the right equipment and definitely try to rent what you can.

Training

Depending on your current fitness level, you’ll want to start training at least 2 months before the hike. I found that running up and down bleachers at a local high school football field worked really well to prepare for the hike. The key is to work on your core muscles for the pack and your legs for the hike.

The best core exercise you can do is the “plank” and “side planks“. Do these 3 - 5 times a week.

For legs, I’ve found that doing stairs and stepper machines is a great way to train. For a little more of a challenge, stand in front of a bench with weights in your hands and step up on it and then step down. Alternate legs each time and don’t let your knees move beyond your toes during the movement.

Learn More

The Siskiyous EDU site has a great virtual tour of the climb, including an description of each leg of the journey with an elevation profile diagram.

The book we used to prepare for Mount Shasta trip was Climbing Mt. Shasta: Route 1 by Steve J. Lewis. This book has everything you need in a simple, easy to follow format. Many websites will try to scare you with how dangerous the hike is. While it’s true that any backpacking trip can be dangerous, if you have some common sense and prepare appropriately Shasta is a pretty safe trip.

For fun you can view the Shasta Cam to get a live view of the mountain.

UPDATE: I’ve written a follow-up post which contains a lot of new information and how my two 2009 trips went.

I just saw this video and it’s a really inspiring visualization of the web, semantic HTML and how it has connected the world. Makes me want to go out and compile some mashups! Enjoy.

“We are the web…teach the machine”