[pct-l] Hood and Rainier on a Thru-hike

[Scott Williams]

Hey Paul,

I don't even remember telling you guys that story, but that's probably just
how drunk you all got me at Warner Springs last year after the big snow.
 Much has already been said about Shasta, and although it can be climbed
anytime of year, the usual season is April to early June if coming up the
south side anyway, and it's for the same reasons mentioned for Hood, the
darn mtn just comes apart when the ice melts.  So even from April to June,
you start your climb from base camp at 1 or 2 in the morning so as to make
it up and down by noon.  Base camp at Lake Helen (thank you Muir's youngest
again) is 11,000 feet, and all afternoon, you hear rocks and boulders coming
down from all around the camp.  It's a big basin, and Base Camp is not
usually threatened, it's just that the trail up "the Heart" is right in the
line of fire so to speak, as you climb up the center of the depression and
are bulls eye for passing canon balls.

The day we made it to base camp in late May, we were kind of taking in the
sights and sounds, rocks rolling all around that basin, maybe 3 or 4 pm,
when it's the loosest, when a huge bolder, bigger than a house broke loose
from the ridge to the west of us.  It went airborne off a cliff and hit the
top third of a huge spire, one of the ones you can see from Hwy 5, and the
top 3rd of that thing just exploded.  Rock, ice and snow in a huge cloud of
stuff billowing right down at base camp.  It was like in some damn nature
movie, only louder, and we were right in the path, as base camp is on the
glacial moraine that creates Helen Lake.  It didn't get us, and just spilled
out all over the ice on Helen, but it scared the shit out of about 100 of us
camped on that moraine.  Really crazy.

That night while climbing, it was just a lot of little lights going up that
depression, and whenever a rock, or bolder would come loose, someone up
trail would yell, "Rock!", and we'd all aim our headlights up the slot, and
try to see it so as to get the hell out of the way.  One of them that
whizzed past my head, about the size of a canon ball, we later learned hit a
woman toward the bottom of the hill, and broke her ankle.  As we were making
our way up, she was being medivaced out.  Two days later another person
slipped on the ice and was killed when she could not self arrest in time.
 Last year, two CAL Berkeley mountaineers went up in January. They were very
experienced, made it to the top, but one of them started suffering from
HAPE, and was dead in a very short time.  His buddy tried unsuccessfully to
resuscitate him, but eventually had to leave him dead on the mtn. to get
help.  The press had a field day, and made it all the worse by insinuating
that the guy had left his friend to die.  Not true at all.

Three of us geezers made it to the top, and had a hell of a great time, but
it's not an easy jaunt.  You'll need a helmet, ice axe for the slots in the
red banks, and good crampons.  No rope necessarily, but the main thing with
any mtn. as steep as Shasta is to get it when it's still frozen.  It's done
in late summer, but it's not as safe as in spring.    You can rent all that
stuff in Shasta City, right on Hwy 5, a short hitch from the PCT.

Good luck with it, as it's a great climb, just not to be taken lightly.

Shroomer