Mount Shasta Summit Report

Mount Shasta Summit Report
(August 21-23, 2009)


Friday August 21st

Anders and I met up at SFO when his plane arrived around 4 pm Friday afternoon. We grabbed his bags and threw them in the back of our Saturn “SUV” rental and we were driving north by 4:30. We were off to take a shot at our second big Cascade volcano of the 2009 season, as we had climbed Mount Rainier back in early June. The target for this weekend was Mount Shasta, the 14,179-foot giant of northern California.

Shasta is the 2nd highest peak in the Cascades (behind Rainier) and the 5th highest in California. Its name in Karuk (indigenous folks from the area) is “Uytaahkoo” which means White Mountain. The name is more appropriate in the months other than August and we fully expected to see a lot of rock to go along with the white. Shasta is big with an estimated volume of 108 cubic miles, making it the most voluminous stratovolcano (which means it is comprised of many layers or strata from periodic eruptions and lava flows) in the Cascade Volcanic Arc.

Shasta is a famous mountain that captured the imagination of two great American environmentalists, John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt. Muir said: “When I first caught sight of it over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley, I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since.” And Roosevelt: “I consider the evening twilight on Mt. Shasta one of the grandest sights I have ever witnessed.”

The mountain consists of four overlapping volcanic cones, which have built a complex shape, including the main summit and the prominent satellite cone of the 12,330-foot Shastina, which has a visibly conical form. If Shastina were a separate mountain, it would rank as the third-highest peak of the Cascade Range. Shasta’s peak is noticeably more pointed than the fairly broad-shouldered Rainier as it’s most recent eruptions are not as distant in the past as Rainier’s.

Nearly 7,000 feet of Mount Shasta’s height is above the timberline. Consequently, this is among the most barren wilderness areas in northern California. The plushest forest within the boundary is found on the northeast and southeast slopes of the mountain. Glaciers, tundra and massive scree fields dominate the rest of the area, although small meadows punctuate the lower flanks of Mount Shasta.

We were planning to climb from the North Gate Trailhead up the Hotlum-Bolum Ridge (this ridge cleaves the Hotlum and Bolum glaciers), which has a total elevation gain of 7,262 feet from a start altitude of 6,917. Although some 15,000 people attempt to summit Shasta each year (and about 5,000 make it) most of these attempts are on the south side on what is known as the Avalanche Gulch route. This route is considerably easier than the HB ridge but the rock-fall danger there this time of the year persuaded us to attack the more difficult and technical north side of the mountain.

In our drive up we encountered a lot of the weekend Tahoe traffic and so did not roll into Mount Shasta City until about 10:30. We pulled off the highway and checked into the nearest hotel, which turned out to be a Best Western. We readied our gear and were both in bed by 11:30—hopefully ready for a couple of big days.

Saturday, August 22nd

We awoke around 6:30, showered and scored a little grub and a lot of coffee. By 8 we were at The Fifth Season (the local mountaineer store) to meet our guide. We had arranged to climb with a private guide to help us with route finding and as a safety precaution as we know some aspects of our chosen route were potentially somewhat technical. We were a little surprised, but no less excited, to find our guide to be named “Natalie”—a 25 year-old Russian graduate of UC Davis. While she had an extensive endurance sport background (collegiate swimmer, long-distance biker and recent marathoner), her climbing resume seemed a little light—certainly in comparison to the outstanding guides we had at Rainier. None-the-less, she had a lot more experience than Anders and I--and she seemed nice enough so we were good to go.

We dumped all of our stuff on the lawn and went through a fairly quick equipment check, which we passed in flying colors (we may not know much about climbing but we do most certainly have the right gear). We loaded all of our stuff plus a bunch of group gear (tent, food, cooking gear) into our packs and hopped in our cars for the 30-mile drive to the trailhead—it was just about game time!

We drove up I-5 to the very California town of “Weed” and then headed east on CA 97. To our right were a series of fairly intimidating views of Shasta and Shastina. Big lava flow masses periodically stretched down very near the highway. As we looked up at the north face and the HB ridge it was clear that there was going to be a lot of rock in our future.

We turned off of 97 and proceeded to drive up a very jarring, dusty “road” to the North Gate trailhead. We rolled out of the car at 10:30 and immediately set about getting our gear ready to go. At 11 we were off.

We were in shorts and t-shirts, which was awesome—especially compared to Rainier. Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, we were climbing in our alpine, double/plastic mountaineering boots—our guide service wanted to make sure that we wouldn’t get stopped with blisters higher up. This was a bad call as climbing in 6-8 pounds of boots is not the best thing when it’s 80-90 degrees out.

The lower, trek in was just fabulous. Massive Redwoods or Sequoias (our so-called guide had no idea what I was talking about when I asked—heh-heh…more on this latter) towered above us and the trail was a very well maintained 2-4% grade path. We were cruising and getting to know each other as we moved very quickly up. Natalie had told us that we were looking at a minimum of 4 and more likely 5 hours to climb up to our mid-mountain camp at 9800 but both Anders and I thought we would pound through this climb a lot faster. After an hour or so we stopped and ate and drank and all was very cool in Christofferson climbing land.

The rest of the climb to mid-mountain was unremarkable. We soon left the forest and found ourselves negotiating the chaos of the scree/talus field that exists over essentially all of Shasta’s flanks. We stopped once again around 12 and finally made mid-mountain right at 1 pm—just 3 hours after leaving the trailhead. Natalie was pumped and both Anders and I felt totally on top of our game.

On that point, being able to climb Shasta with more competence, elegance and reserve was a big objective for me on this trip. Anders had far less problems on Rainier so I know he was less focused on this than I. I, on the other hand, wanted to avoid the couple of moments of drama that I went through on Rainier. I was in a lot better shape for this climb then I was in early June. I wanted to dance up the mountain with no mistakes and come back down, head to SF and then celebrate our mastery with an Anchor Steam. I was convinced that despite my complete absence of hiking/climbing specific training that my recent, strong performance in triathlon indicated that I would have a very high level of competence on Shasta. Certainly our climb to mid-Mountain reinforced this optimism.

Natalie gave us 2.5 hours to pitch our tent, chill and get ready for a refresher course in alpine mountaineering techniques. Natalie asked us if we snored a lot, which we fumbled a bit in our answer, and then she decided to set-up her tent a ways away from us. This left Anders and I the task of erecting a tent we had never seen before this trip. Anders laid down to rest and I fumbled around for a while and then deciding that I need not have an ego with respect to mountaineering I called up to Natalie for help. Help she did, and soon we had our home away from home set up. We put our sleeping pads, blankets, etc. in and we still had over an hour until “school”.

I decided to go over to our water source, which was a very small, algae encrusted, rocky stream running out from the snowfield above our camp. Natalie assured us that it was good and no purification was necessary. I had some pretty strong doubts but lacking any viable alternatives I went with the flow. I filled my bottles, drank some and hoped for the best.

Around 3pm we saw some other mountaineers, that we had left at the trailhead, trek on up past us and they eventually set up their camp a few hundred vertical feet above us. Besides that, this was a strangely uneventful and almost boring period of time.

At 3:30 Natalie came down from her area and we were off to practice alpine techniques. When we did this at Rainier it had taken 6 hours. On this day it was at most 45 minutes. I’d like to report that this was because Anders and I were so good now but realistically, that was not the case. The Shasta program clearly seems far less rigorous and safety oriented than the guides we worked with at Rainier.

Just like Rainier, Anders excelled at Alpine School and I struggled. Natalie, however, did not seem all that focused on honing my skills and soon we were heading back to camp after less than an hour of instruction. During this time another Shasta Mountain Guides group of four came into camp from their successful summit—they were returning to camp around 4:30pm and where staying the night at mid-mountain as part of a four day climb. They gave us some intel on the route—it seemed that the path up was in pretty descent shape. They described it as “mixed climbing” with some ice in parts. I didn’t like the sound of that last part.

Upon arriving in camp we had a discussion about gear/clothing strategy (which I thought Nat did a good job on), and went about preparing for dinner and the climb tomorrow. She thought it would take us 8-9 hours to summit and that we would be back to camp by 4-7 pm. This would put us down in the parking lot at the trailhead sometime between 7 and 10 pm. Anders and I needed to drive to San Francisco that night for our early Monday morning departures so we insisted that we would go much faster. Natalie wasn’t entirely convinced but did note we were much faster to mid-mountain than was typical. Nat boiled water and Anders and I soon enjoyed some nice “instant” Teriyaki Chicken. We cleaned up and soon were ready for bed.

It was only 6:30 and very much still day-time but Anders and I decided to “retire” to our palace and try to get at least a little sleep. It was still very light out so we spent the next hour or so shooting the shit and laughing about all sorts of dumb things. We pitched our tent (or so Anders claims) on a slight side slope so Anders kept rolling into me trying to be the big spoon. Anders hit me several times during the night claiming I was or about to start snoring—this I fully deny. At one point Anders wandered outside to take care of business and came back in muttering about the stars—really? At 10,000 feet on a clear moonless night—what are the chances? During the night the wind came up a bit and the fly of the tent rattled about quite a bit. It also began to feel noticeably colder—having Anders as the big spoon wasn’t so bad after all! In any event, we both slept a lot, much more than Rainier, and soon found ourselves nearing the Summit day wake-up call.

Sunday, August 23rd

Right on cue our respective alarms went off at 1 am. We said our good mornings and soon Natalie wandered by to make sure we weren’t slacking off. The plan was to do everything we needed to do to get ready and head up at 2 am. So we immediately set about the tasks at hand. It went something like this for me:
- turn helmet lamp on
- pull climbing pants on
- put Dragon soft-shell on
- put socks on
- open tent and grab boot liners and put them on
- grab food bag and put outside tent
- put down jacket on
- put helmet on
- go outside, look at stars, remark on coldness
- put outside boot shells on
- put gaiters on
- get hot water from Natalie and make double coffee
- crack jokes with Anders
- check backpack (for 5th time)—especially to make sure crampons, axe and glasses are good to go
- eat two crumbly frosted raspberry pop-tarts, drink coffee and lots of water
- grab pack-out bag and “hit-the target”
- store pack-out bag under rock for latter retrieval
- throw various odds and ends into tent and zip it up
- refill water and put in pack
- take off down jacket
- don pack, grab trekking polls
- check watch—1:59 am…. good to go!

The first part of the climb is up from our camp area to get to the HB ridge proper. This is over a rock field and of modest slope. We pass a couple of tents of another group of three who were here to climb the north side as well (they would not summit). The initial hike up to the ridge itself was easy and pleasant. Our headlamps provided ample illumination in the moonless night. Since the ridge was quite exposed we were blasted with a 20+ mph wind. The only sound (besides the wind) was the crunch, crunch, and crunch of our boots as we walked in single file.

We gained the ridge and could look up and see the darker outline of the mountain and just above it the great planet Jupiter burning bright high in the sky to the south. I could see my breath, it probably was around 35 degrees, but was very comfortable despite my lack of clothes.

We climbed until about 3 am and stopped for our first break at around 11,000 feet. We ate and drank (I drank 2/3rd of a liter as I had brought three liters for this climb). We put on our crampons, stored our trekking polls and took out our axes. We did not rope up as Natalie said the slope was modest and the snow pretty good over the next section. Soon it was time to layer down and get back to it—we stopped for about 10 minutes in total.

For the next part of the climb we actually ventured out onto the Hotlum glacier and climbed on the good snow that was directly adjacent to the ridge. Even though we were un-roped on a 25-degree slope I did not have any safety concerns. Our crampons were digging securely into the snow and even in the very unlikely event of a fall I felt very confident I could arrest with my axe.

After about a half hour of this we once again climbed through a rock field/ridge and moved to the climber’s left as we were heading to the bottom of a feature know as “The Ramp”. We continued to make very good time and soon found ourselves at the beginning of The Ramp around 12,000 feet. It was around 4:30 or so and still quite dark with just the very faintest suggestion of the dawn to come etched on the eastern horizon. Here we stopped for another, though extended, break as we ate and drank and Natalie prepared our team rope for the next section. Far down the mountain, on the lower ridge, we could periodically see the lights from (presumably) the other party’s headlamps as they climbed towards us.

The Ramp stretches from about 12 to 13 thousand feet and is about a 30-50 yard wide swath of snow that steeply (35-45 degrees) climbs up to an area of the mountain known as “The Step”. This is the area of the mountain that is 300-600 vertical feet below two prominent features on the upper mountain: The Shark Fin and the Bunny Ears. Due to the prevalent ice on the Ramp, crampons and ropes are a necessity here as a non-arrested fall would be catastrophic.

Before we departed from the North Gate, Natalie had stated that her three goals for the climb were: “1. Safety; 2. Having fun; And 3. Helping us meet whatever our goals were.” As for number 3, our first two goals were identical to hers. Then we wanted a round trip to the summit. Lastly, I wanted to do this climb with a higher degree of competence and “elegance” then I displayed on Rainier. I did not want to have to dig as deep as I had to there and I definitely did not want to trip and fall or display any of the sloppiness I had on my descent in June. I was optimistic about my chances of achieving this as I had the Rainier experience under my belt and I was in considerably better shape now than early June.

Up to the bottom of The Ramp everything had gone very well indeed. We were moving much faster than Natalie had forecasted. In fact as we roped up, she commented that she had never been this high in the dark before. (While I was a bit proud of this, I didn’t view it as particularly good news as she seemed a bit uncertain of the route). My HR had stayed low and I was well within my aerobic capabilities all the way up to 12,000 feet. I was feeling a little cocky which is probably a bad thing from a karmic perspective.

Anyways, off we went executing a series of traverses up The Ramp. We were short-roped. Short roping is the desired way for a small rope team to climb when there is no crevasse danger. On Rainier, with all of its crevasses, we climbed with about 30-40 feet of rope between us to give us ample opportunity to respond if someone fell into a crevasse. Here on Shasta, with no crevasses to worry about, the distance between us was only 8-9 feet or so.

The short rope made ascending quite easy and we very efficiently managed the many direction changes as we traversed back and forth and always upward. There was no wind here and we were effectively by ourselves on the mountain. While it was still very dark, a definite glow was visible on the eastern horizon and Venus shown very brightly just above the horizon. Absolutely magical! I was very focused on my climbing and we were hitting on all cylinders as a team. I love this part of mountaineering. This was a truly great life moment for me.

The snow was steep and very icy but the crampons ensured that we had no mistakes. I was in command of my feet and felt on top of my game. I did notice however that I was beginning to work quite a bit harder. My HR was probably well up into the 150s at this point. Our pace, the pitch and the altitude were beginning to expose limitations in my mountaineering fitness. None-the-less, we pushed onwards up The Ramp and without incident reached the mellower Step area just as dawn clearly asserted itself in the east.

We stopped for another maintenance break and Natalie announced that we had surpassed the hardest part of the climb. That was good news to hear for sure—unfortunately it wasn’t true. We had a quick break and then traversed off to our right towards the Shark Fin. This traverse was across a steep, uneven icy snowfield. I was definitely working hard right now. I was clearly working harder than my climbing partners in front of me. This is probably not surprising given the composition of our team. When you have a three-person team and you have more than half of the combined years (100 in our case) you know you are potentially at risk of being the slow child.

We worked around the Shark Fin and then headed up a steep area aiming to get above the Bunny Ears. This section was all loose talus and scree and I found the going to be quite difficult here. My section of the rope frequently went taunt as I was having trouble keeping up with Natalie and Anders in front of me. The footing was very difficult and it was hard to keep balance as the ground beneath me kept slipping and sliding.

While this section only entailed about a 600-foot vertical ascent I found it far more taxing than any of the prior sections. We sat down with the Ears to our left and looked back down the frighteningly steep slopes below us all the way down to the lower ridge where we could clearly see a yellow tent. The sun was above the horizon and it was a beautiful, bright and clear sky. I tried to focus on eating and drinking as I fought to catch my breath in the thin air. I probably should have announced that I needed to slow a bit (there were no objective dangers such as we had faced on Rainier that required us to move fast) but I sensed that Natalie was starting to get a little irritated with my slowing pace and my brain seemed to not be functioning as well as I fought through the fog of fatigue.

I milked the break as long as I could by breaking out my video camera just as Natalie moved to head up. Even this move soon played out and off came the down and on came the packs and we headed up again.

Immediately above us was a very difficult, steep talus and scree slope the seemed to lead to a dead-end at a 10 or so foot high vertical wall of rock. I was huffing and puffing to keep up but kept looking up and wondering where and how we were to get around this obstacle. After a seemingly interminable time we reached the base of this cliff and I realized that Natalie intended us to climb it! I was dumfounded. We were at 13, 700 feet or so. Below us was a steep slope (and fall) of over 3,000 feet. I was over my aerobic threshold and struggling just to keep it together. In the back of my mind was the thought that I had no chance of climbing down this wall when we returned. (What we didn’t know was there were two routes to the top. To the right was a relatively simple class two climb up a talus/scree slope all the way to the summit. For some reason, Natalie had decided instead to take Anders and I up this exposed, class three/four vertical rock climb.) She announced at the bottom that we were now going to do some real climbing. My only thought was: “Great—that makes a lot of sense!”

She proceeded to scramble up the climb in something like 20 seconds. She turned and looked down at Anders and told him to go for it, which he did in seemingly no more time. They were perched above me—10 feet or so. The rope was tight and tugging at my harness. Natalie was effectively creating a tight belay for me. Natalie told me that it was now my turn. Anders said something that I took as a form of encouragement.

My world seemed to just stop. I looked up. I wedged my left foot, with my big bulky mountaineering boots in a bit of a crack/ledge. I reached up with my left hand as high as I could and grabbed hold of a two-inch ledge—this was complicated by the ice axe I was still holding. What I then needed to do was lift my right leg up about three feet to a narrow outcropping, place my foot on it and simultaneously drive my body (and backpack) upwards and reach and grab a handhold that was about four to five feet above me. I felt a surge of strength and just went for it and I was able to do it perfectly. I was absolutely at my physical limit but I saw the next move and quickly went for it again. I felt the tug on my harness as Natalie was doing her best to “pull” me up and just like that I was sitting next to Anders and Natalie. I received some type of congrats from both but I mostly remember just being really buzzed—that was awesome—I was so in the moment.

We had a short steep rock scramble and soon we were on a mere 45-degree rock slope above the wall. We had clearly surmounted the true crux of the climb. We un-roped and pushed upwards towards the summit—some 500 vertical feet above us.

Physiologically I was toast—I had gone way to far into the red zone. Natalie and Anders were moving steadily away from me as I struggled to negotiate the rocky terrain with my HR still maxed. I needed to slow down but for some reason I felt a need to try to keep up with my climbing team. I was unsustainably anaerobic. In hindsight I’m amazed that I made these mistakes without reflecting on my level of effort. Apparently, I was caught up in the idea of moving up and down the mountain quickly (we wanted to get down to San Francisco at a reasonable hour) and my mind was not functioning normally in the thin air.

Natalie and Anders reached the summit plateau and waited a few minutes for me to join them. Natalie pointed out the North and South summits and said we could climb either of them. I asked which was higher and she said that the south was. Seemed obvious to me then—let’s go to the south. I asked her how far it was and she snapped at me that it was right there. It occurred to me that Natalie seemed to be developing an attitude but I let it go, as I was very focused on gaining the summit.

I shot a little video of them climbing towards the summit and then made the final push myself. There were three other folks on the Summit who apparently came up from the south side. As I walked towards the summit they loaded up and headed back down. I took a great picture of Anders on the summit and soon joined him and Natalie took a shot of the two of us. It was 8 am—we were 2-3 hours ahead of Natalie’s predicted summit timeframe. The summit pinnacle was a relatively small, rocky spire with a several thousand-foot fall to the south. Anders stood but I was content to sit next to him on the summit as our pic was snapped. We soon climbed down and then signed the National Park Service’s Summit Register.

We sat on the summit plateau soaking in the sunlight of a truly spectacular day. I tried to eat and drink but this proved difficult. Despite wearing my down jacket I began to shake pretty violently. Natalie noticed and asked what was up. I said that I was pretty wasted but that I would get it under control. She looked at me with a hint of disgust.

The truth is I felt horrible. I had extended way too deep for way too long. My body was trying to shut things down—it wanted desperately to rest and replenish. Unfortunately, this was not the place for that. I began to realize that I was in for a tough slog to the bottom. I wasn’t exactly in trouble, but I’ve been in this place physically a few times (late in Ironman races typically) so I knew things were not going to be pleasant. I was calm about this because I knew that I would need to walk down the mountain no matter what I felt like. I knew that I have succeeded in the past when I felt like this. I resolved to be positive and focused on not making mistakes.

After about 30 minutes on the summit we layered down, hoisted our packs and began the climb down. I was quickly relieved to learn that our path down was the much more reasonable class two climb around to the east of the summit, avoiding the rock wall that we had ascended. I once again quickly fell behind as we walked down a reasonably well-defined trail through the talus and past numerous sulfur vents (Shasta remains an active volcano). I was trying to be careful but still go as fast as I could. My HR seemed fine but I began to notice some definite muscle fatigue—especially in my quads, and most especially in my right quad.

As I fell further and further behind Anders and Natalie, I began to have trouble with route finding and several times Anders hung back and helped me find an easier path. The slope was about 35-45 degrees but all rock so there was minimal risk of a serious fall. The rock was constantly moving and very uneven and it required a great deal of concentration to move efficiently.

After about 45 minutes or so we came to a snow patch at about 13,700 feet. This was fairly steep and had an exposure of several hundred feet that terminated in a nasty rock field. Natalie and Anders were on the other side and Natalie asked me if I wanted her to come back and rope up with me. My brain was not working that well but I looked at the snow and my ego questioned why this was even an issue. I asked Anders what the snow quality was and he said it was good and that I would probably have no problem. I looked at Natalie and asked her what she thought and she said, in forceful terms, that falling was not an option. I thought for a second and said: “well if that’s the case, I have no ego here, let’s rope up”. She came across and attached the rope to me and we easily traversed the snow in just a few seconds. I had no issues with it. It was a little awkward but I reiterated that safety was the most important objective and my ego was a non-factor so it was all-good. Anders laughed and Natalie actually smiled for the first time in a couple of hours.

Soon we were at The Step and we stopped for another maintenance break. I still had trouble eating but was able to drink a fair amount. My body temp was under control so I was feeling a little better. Natalie asked what was going on with me and I told here I had gone too far into the red zone and was having trouble managing my energy levels. She seemed a bit confused and not particularly interested in this. We threw our crampons on, de-layered, and soon were on our way downward again.

The next major section was The Ramp. I was very fatigued but positive inside and focused on not making a mistake. Anders led, followed by me and then Natalie. Several times during the climb down The Ramp she would say something mean or rude and I tried to ignore or deflect it. She was clearly upset with me that I was no longer flying up and down the mountain—maybe she had a hot date or something. We reached the bottom of The Ramp—which really was the last truly objectively dangerous section-- without incident. I may not have been graceful but I never fell either. I felt pretty proud about this because it took a lot of concentration. When Natalie wasn’t looking, Anders turned to me, looked at Natalie and rubbed a fake tear out of his eye. I laughed—yes she was being a very big baby. Extremely unprofessional and not at all customer oriented.

After a short break we continued on downward and it was more of the same. Finally I said to Natalie that I was concerned about her and asked her if she was OK. She snapped back: “I don’t want to fall!”. (Obviously implying I was a liability that might make her fall). I responded that gee, neither did I, that I was doing all that I could to avoid it, that I hadn’t so far, and that I was confident, despite my fatigue, that I would not. I then reminded her of the three goals (safety, fun, and a round-trip, etc.). She grew quiet for a while after this. A short while after this she announced that we would stop up ahead and “have a meeting”. Bring it on!

When we stopped, it was at the top of the HB ridge below The Ramp, and she said we could descend roped together on the snowfield or stay on the rock and go without rope. At one level I wondered why I was even being asked this—I thought she was the guide but I also knew she didn’t want to be roped to me so I suggested the latter and off we went. It was very rocky and uneven and I would frequently fall behind and then catch-up as Anders and Natalie waited for me. I resolved to be nothing but perseverant and upbeat and I tried to have an apology and a joke ready each time we rendezvoused.

At one point, when we were together, we passed a solo climber thinking about going up and he asked me for route advice. I said if he didn’t want to free climb a vertical rock face he should avoid the route we climbed. He asked where that route was and I told him that he should ask Natalie because she was the pro here. Silence ensued as we uncomfortably waited for miss Stalin, oops I mean Natalie to reply. When she didn’t, I asked her directly if she could help our fellow mountaineer with some route advice. She replied, very icily (and I thought in a classically Russian way): “no”.

Well there you have it. I looked at him and said: “I’m real sorry about that. Be careful and good luck.” He raised his eyebrows and said thanks and we then went our separate ways. I hope he was ok.

We continued on for a while. At one point I asked the ice-queen if she was having fun and she didn’t really reply. I told her that I really wanted her to have fun and asked her if there was anything I could do to help her enjoy herself more. She was silent. I finally said: “I know you’re upset that I’m not going faster. I want you to know that I’m going as fast as I possibly can and still be safe. I wish I could go faster as well but my 52 year-old body doesn’t seem to be able to go any faster. This surprises me but I think all in all we are still doing pretty well—we’ll achieve our three objectives. No response. After a second or two I pointed out that we were 3-4 hours ahead of her schedule so maybe it wasn’t that bad. She didn’t say much after that—good or bad.

The last 500 vertical feet above camp she suggested we “ski” down on our feet. I think this is a fine idea although it proved to be something that I was not capable of doing. It was slippery (duh!) and uneven terrain as there were many large sun-cups. Soon Anders and Natalie “skied” over the ridge and I was left to my own designs. I tried to carefully walk the ridges between the cups but I fell down hard several times (not dangerous because it wasn’t steep). I thought several times that it was ridiculous that I didn’t have my crampons on. Finally on one of my falls I slid into several inches of freestanding glacial water at the bottom of a cup and decided to put them on. No problem getting down the rest of the way.

When I finally caught up some 15 minutes latter Nat and Anders were waiting for me on some rocks. Anders latter told me that he was very worried when I took so long and asked Natalie if maybe they should go look for me (he was worried I had fallen and maybe broke something). She told him that I would be fine because we were so close to camp.

In any event, at 1:45, some 5 hours after leaving the Summit we made it back to camp. It took us one hour less to get back to camp then it had taken us to get up. My guess is that it should have taken 1.5-2 hours less but we were still 2-5 hours ahead of the schedule she had first told us about. I tried to be upbeat and self-deprecating. Anders paid me a sweet complement when he that he had never seen someone exhibit such extended perseverance with such a positive attitude. Frankly, that alone made the whole trip worth it.

Our next task was to break down our campsite, load up our packs and beat-it down the lower mountain to the parking lot. Little Miss Sunshine gave us one hour to do this. We did it mostly because Anders stepped up and handled the tent decommissioning mostly by himself. I was in a lot of pain so this was greatly appreciated. I tried to drink as much of the algae water as possible but I could not even think about eating anything. The sun was beating down although the temp was noticeably cooler than Saturday—probably about 60 degrees (We were blessed with absolutely perfect weather for this whole trip). At 2:44; 59 minutes after we arrived, Anders and I hoisted our-70 pound packs and we were on our way.

I’ll spare you the tedium (or at least anymore tedium) and the agony of the 7+-mile walk out. Suffice it to say it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Anders and the Commandant were fine but I was faced with soul-searching pain. At one point, Anders and I talked about how long we could sustain a task like this if we know at the end a loved-one would be killed (in this case Alex). I said that I was sure I could make it to the parking lot but I wasn’t sure how much more I could really do—maybe only a few hours beyond that. Anders said that he wondered what that feeling was like and that he hoped he felt it someday—hey kid, climb a big mountain when you’re a fossil!

Anyways, all is well that ends well. We arrived at the parking lot at 5:45. We took care of business and I gave Natiskie $60 which most folks will question the wisdom of—given how bad a guide she was. My thinking was that we made it; she needed $60 more than I did, and I didn’t want any more drama.

We drove out the interminlble 11-mile drive to the main road and then another 15 miles to the great town of Weed, CA where we hit a gas station and I consumed 2 Mountain Dews, 1 Squirt (all 16 oz) and 4 Advills. Anders then took over driving. During this time we talked to Judy and let her know that we had survived. About 100 miles from SanFran we stopped had some salad and lemonade and took some pizza to go. Anders folded for me as we ate on the way to SF. We arrived at the airport Hyatt at 12:30 am—totally strung out. In the parking garage we got our gear in order and went up to the room to shower and amazingly we were in bed by 1:20am.

Up at 4:15 and Anders and I each caught 6ish flights and we reentered the real world. Whew!

Great trip. We did it. Two big mountains this summer for the rookies. A bit of bummer on having such a horrible guide but the silver lining is that it did give us an extra chance to exhibit grace in the face of adversity—which we did. Many extremely special moments during the climb and hanging with Anders—my true adventure bud.

A lot to reflect on. Clearly I have a real problem with my descending technique. I definitely have to proactively address this. I work a lot harder than other people on the descent. As I finish this discourse some 8 days latter I am still not fully recovered. Even in Ironman, I’ve not had this challenge. But still, all in all, an awesome trip. Much less real danger and drama than Rainier partly because I think we are better mountaineers now. Anders is potentially a great mountaineer—I have a lot of work to do before I climb Everest with him! ☺

Thanks for reading.

rc