From Mt. Shasta

Day 33: Slept all the way until 6am, then hung out around the house before the Wimbledon Finals. Most television I’ve watched in over a month. It’s been great unplugging from the world.

Sam is on call and has to head into the hospital for the first part of the morning, so I’m on my own for the first part of the match. Alcarez is off to good start winning the first set, but Sinner has found his serve and is taking control of the match. Sam returns from work and reminds me that with the time difference the Red Sox game starts at 10:30am, so we’re able to put that on the laptop as Sinner is cruising to the win.

With the match over we make and eat some lunch, and watch the Red Sox win their 10th straight. Afterwards, we head into town to run some errands.

First stop is groceries to load up for for our hiking, and backpacking trips this week. We also stopped at the outdoor store to get permits for our Tuesday hike up Mount Shasta (the volcano for whom the town is named). One of the employees also told us that most of the snow has melted and we will be able to hike around the remaining snow. We also rented some helmets as the route we are taking apparently has some loose rocks.

After dinner, we head to a benefit concert in the park, and take Sam’s dog Stephen. It is mostly bluegrass, but it’s fitting for this small, slightly hippie community.

Day 34: Awake a little after 5, but lie in bed until nearly 6. Stephen even joined me, hopping into the bed and promptly snuggling under the covers.

Sam had to run into the hospital for a few hours giving me some time catch up on some reading. Trying to take another rest day as tomorrow will be a long day. We are hiking up Mount Shasta and all the advice we have received about hiking it in the summer is to start early. The goal is to be off the mountain by early afternoon and it is about a 12 hour hike, which means a 12am-2am start.

Once he gets back we eat leftovers for lunch, then head back to town to grab a couple more items for the PCT and some food for dinner.

We (Sam) made some a delicious Sesame Spinach Stir Fry, and we eat a little after 4:30 to try to get to bed early. Sam is planning to attend his run club at 6pm, then go to bed, but I head to my room around 6 to start winding down.

It’s supposed to take 30 minutes to get to the trailhead, and we want to start by 1am, so we decide on a 12am wakeup.

I manage to coerce myself to fall asleep not long after 7.

Day 35: I wake up to some noise and light. I think I hear my name called, but my alarm has not gone off yet. Stephen is pawing my door. I roll over to check my watch and it is 11:45pm. Not too long before my alarm should go off.

I step out and Sam is already up. Apparently he looked up the drive after I went to bed and it is actually a little over an hour away, so he got up early. I’m on board with heading out earlier, and we load up our gear, grab some food for the car, Sam gets some coffee, and we are on the way by 12:15am.

The trailhead is in the National Forest and fittingly the majority of the drive is down bumpy dirt roads that do a great job of shaking us awake before the hike.

After reaching the trailhead just before 1:30 we grab our stuff, make our final clothing decisions based on the slightly warmer weather and are on our way just after 1:30.

Our headlamps affixed on our heads the trail is not too hard to follow and the excitement of starting the hike has us in good spirits. The moon is bright, and beautiful and we can vaguely make out the silhouette of the mountain in the distance.

The first few miles of the hike are relatively easy, and we are out of the tree line a little over an hour into the hike. From here we cross our first patch of snow. It is flat and not to slick and we cross without issue. From here, the trail begins to steepen and the small switchbacks start. It’s well over 1,000 feet of elevation gain per mile. We slow down partially because of the steepness of the trail, but also to make sure we are following the correct trail as it cuts back and forth every 5-10 feet.

Although, we have slowed down it is very manageable and I’m starting to think about how quickly we can knock out this hike. We stopped for a quick snack and a solo hiker catches up to us. His name is Derek from Central Oregon. He starts back a little before us and we follow his light up the mountain.

Pretty soon we catch up to Derek who is attaching ice spikes to his boots to climb an expanse of snow that blankets a side of the mountain and is too steep for us to climb in normal hiking boots. Sam, at least, has winter boots that have some grip, but mine are not great in the slick snow. We have no chance of climbing up the snow, but make an initial effort to cross to reach what looks like a manageable climb on the other side. But it still dark and we can not find a suitable path with just our headlights and have to turn back and hug a rock wall that abuts the snow. This is our first section of scrambling, and it is tough to manage. However, Sam is pretty adept at finding a path even if there is not a clear one to follow, and leads us above the snow and gets us back on the trail.

Close to 3 hours in and it is still dark out, but at least we are back on a real trail and making our way up the mountain. It is switchback-heavy and I am in my element pushing the pace a little as we have gotten the hang of following the trail with only 5 meters of light in front of us. Sam is starting to fight the altitude and is pacing himself accordingly. I hold up on one of the switchback to wait and we get our first glimpse of light a little after 5am. It is not yet sunrise, but it is surely coming.

About 40 minutes, and a handful of switchbacks later, the sun has crested the horizon to the east. We do not have a full view, but it is beautiful.

Not much later we are able to take off the headlights and see that our trail is now mostly loose skree. We had now caught up to Derek after he took a break and try to space out to not knock loose rock onto each other.

Sam checks AllTrails and notices we are a little off trail. We slowly navigate back and find not good, but better footing. It is still a grind. There is a lot of scrambling on loose rock and is very slow going. It has to be. The terrain is even steeper. I would guess over 1,200 feet of vertical gain per mile at this point, and there is the potential of sliding back on nearly every step in the small, fine rock. Even the sections with larger rocks are a challenge as many of those are loose and I sometimes have to try multiple hand/foot holds before finding a safe combination. Sam is much better at this type of hiking (read: climbing) and waits for me every few minutes, but knows to stay far enough ahead to not hit me with any of the rocks he may knock loose.

Physically I’m fine, but am starting to crack mentally. A few hours ago I thought we would knock out the hike no problem, but now every step feels like a battle against this maniacal mountain. After over an hour and maybe a mile traveled, Sam looks back down and informs me that the trail is going to level out soon. Wanting to turn back, but not wanting to leave Sam, I trudge forward and make it through the gorge.

He’s right, there is an easier section, but not a clear path to the top. I’m frustrated and not willing to attempt anything tougher than what we just completed. However, we follow the trail a little longer and find the path to the summit. It is steep, but much more manageable.

Initially, I’m not even excited when we reach the top. Derek is there and asks how our section of trail was. Apparently the path he took was the most dangerous he has ever been on, and he was worried that he may not make it through. We believed him. As tough as our last mile plus was, his sounded even more menacing. That made me feel a little better.

Derek took our picture at the top, then bid us farewell. He wanted to get a head start on the way down. Staying close to others on those types of paths can lead to injury and he wanted to be in the clear before we headed down.

We hung out at the top a while longer to get eat some food and call parents before heading down. We even signed the log book at the top.

Now came the part I was dreading most on the way up. As challenging as going up a mountain can be, going down a steep path is often just as great of a challenge.

We take the path back down to the gorge and the real descent begins. It’s slow going navigating the safest path to scramble down amongst the larger section of loose rock, but we both make it through.

Now came the most maddening part. The terrain for the next mile was small, not even pebble sized rock, and was a descent of about 1,200 feet. Each step was a bit of a slide as the rocks gave way under our weight. Additionally, my feet often sank into the rocks past my ankle, allowing the rocks to spill into the boot. I could often get into a rhythm and maintain my balance, but every so often I would slide more than expected or not be able to hit the brakes when needed and my feet would come out from beneath me as I fell on my back and slid to a halt. My knees took the worst of the impact in this section and would often twist beneath me as I fell. Physically the effort wasn’t great, as gravity did most of the work, but mentally I cracked a few times throwing a handful of rocks down the side of the mountain out of frustration.

After over an hour we reached the switchback section that was more compact dirt than loose rocks. We took a few minutes to dump rocks out of our shoes then continued the descent. It was much better footing, but far from perfect. I took a few more spills over the next hour as the rocks slid out from beneath me. In the light we were able to find a better path around the snow and followed that down most of the way.

There was a couple glissading down the snow and having a lot more fun than us. But we had neither the equipment or clothing to slide down a snow bank and had to stick to the trail. Eventually, we got to the point where we had to cross. Having lived here for a few years, Sam is much more comfortable on the snow and was able to cross this slick, steep section without issue. I on the other hand could not get more than a few steps without my boots starting to slide. For the most part I was able to use my trekking poles to stay upright, but in a few of the slicker sections I fell over and had to use the poles to catch myself from sliding more than a few feet (there was still a couple hundred feet of snow beneath our crossing point). Incredibly frustrated and now a little cold from the snow, I had no choice but to continue across, finally reaching the other side.

There was one last section of steep switchbacks down to the tree line, but we had navigated the worst of Shasta. It was still a steep descent (600-800 feet per mile) but around half as much as we had just completed and the terrain was much smoother. We cruised the rest of the way taking one more stop to rid our shoes of rocks and made it back to the parking lot about 12 hours after we began.

Exhausted we loaded up the car and drove back to Sam’s house to let Stephen out, then into town to return our helmets and grab a couple pizzas. The 4pm dinner served as our first real meal of a day that had started the night before. We also decided that our planned start of a four day backpacking trip tomorrow may have to be adjusted and we would wait until the morning to figure out what we wanted to do.

Sam, who had not gotten a good night sleep the night before crashed a little after 6, but I stayed up a little longer to ice a couple sore spots on my knees and watch part of the MLB All Star game before heading to bed a little after 8.