Mount Shasta
At 14,179 feet Mount Shasta is the 2nd highest mountain in the Cascade range (next to Rainier) yet easily surpasses it in volume. It’s California’s 5th highest peak and one of the states fifteen 14ers. Located North of Mount Lassen in Northern California, Shasta dominates the Southern Oregon and Northern California skyline for hundreds of miles and has an astonishing prominence of nearly 10,000 vertical feet.
Although Shasta houses seven glaciers the crevasse danger remains low again due to its southern latitude making the ski mountaineering ideal with 7,000 foot ski descents possible from the summit off many aspects of the mountain.
Trip Report:
May 10th 2016
As far as skiing goes Mount Shasta is the stuff of dreams. It has steeps, vert, glaciers, couloirs, and spring corn snow that can in certain conditions start near the top and continue to the car. We just so happened to ski that very corn.. Two days in a row.
Caleb and I arrive at Bunny Flats early afternoon and meet some other skier guys and talk beta for way too long before accepting an offer to go for an after dark snowmobile ride to the east side of the mountain. Once we return we proceed to drink entirely too much beer and whisky, my buddy from Salt Lake shows up and we make an intoxicated plan for the morning. It’s 1:00 before we finally crawl into the camper and sleep. With no plans of an early ski tour we wake, eat, get ready and hit the snow at 10:30.
We begin with skis and skins on from the lot, not a cloud in the sky and surprisingly few other skiers. The day is perfect but our livers ache from the previous nights lack of sobriety so we climb to Thumb rock where the wind rips heavily from the West and rip skins for a 5,000 foot descent in perfect corn snow to the car.
May 11th
Seeing as the snow was near perfect and we didn’t start our descent until 4:00 pm yesterday (late by anyones standards) we decided to start at 8:45 am (many climbers start 4:00 am) and climb up the West face to the summit then ski back down the West face in the late afternoon sun. What we didn’t realize is just how much farther it is climbing the West face verse the traditional South side. Several times we consider turning back for fear of the sun heating the snow to an unskiable consistency, thankfully we don’t. We reach the top at 3:30, take the necessary photos and begin our ski. There’s one other skier who summits right after us and we think he’s just as dumb as us for being up here so late in the day. Never is the skiing from this high up good, but once we drop 1,500 feet, reach the West face and drop in off the ridge near the “Trinity Shoots” the corn reveals itself and is near flawless.
Indeed over 7,000 vertical feet of the best spring snow I’ve ever skied and we didn’t even take our skis off until the car. It was something of an anomaly how well the snow held up but nonetheless our seemingly late start proved to be a wise choice after all.
