Horse Camp

On Monday, I stopped at Mt. Shasta Town on the way to the trailhead, and stood in the viewing place where I stand every time I come here, for a look at the mountain and the route I so much wanted to climb.  There were no clouds anywhere, and the weather forecast was good for the next three days.  I would spend two nights on the mountain, camping on snow the second night, and melting snow for water. 

There was no reason to leave early for the hike to my first night at Horse Camp.  The trailhead at Bunny Flat is only a thirty minute drive from Dunsmuir, and the hike is only two miles.  I wanted to camp at this 7,800-foot elevation to acclimate and avoid, if possible, mountain sickness in climbing to the 14,162-foot summit. 

The trail to Horse Camp

My 40-pound pack

The trail soon lost its dry rock and soil base to be covered with slushy snow or solid ice, depending, it seemed, on the trees and how much of the trail they allowed to receive the warmth of radiant sun.  The weight of my forty-pound pack seemed easy, and I was happy for the man coming down who took a picture of my light-footed and hopeful self, about to ascend the summit. 

Almost to Horse Camp

I had an unreal feeling about this now, as I was finally beginning the ascent, as though I had written it all before, as though it were a train and I was standing on a platform at a station watching it go by.  I had figured out how to survive in all those places I had gone, and I was sure I could figure out Mt. Shasta too.  Or was it that all the mishaps that didn’t happen were now converging in unalterable probability against this particular climb?  I thought how I had once considered Mt. McKinley (Denali) after seeing it from a train window, so much that I bought a book and studied the art and skill of mountaineering, but gave up on the idea those many years ago.  Perhaps Shasta, a lesser goal for an older body, might actually be obtainable.  And soon, there it was , around a bend in the trail, Horse Camp in a lovely setting with scattered  red fir trees, dry ground underneath them, and six-foot-deep snow all between.

The Cabin at Horse Camp

The cabin was built in 1923 by the Sierra Club, and I knew it was not for sleeping—only for emergencies.  I met the caretaker, Cindy, and said I’d like to find a patch of dry ground under a big red fir, melt some snow, and camp for the night.  She said, “We don’t allow camping except on the snow.  We want to protect the forest floor as long as possible into the summer.  You can borrow a snow shovel to level a spot if you want.” 

So I found a place where someone had dug out a protected shelter from the wind, used the shovel to remove newly-fallen snow, and compacted a flat area for sleeping.  I rolled out my small tent and cooked dehydrated food on my propane stove.

Zoomed in on the Route

During the long afternoon on this near-solstice June day, I looked up at the summit and saw clearly the route I hoped to climb in the next two days.  (If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see it too.  Press Esc to return.) I even saw traces where other climbers had traveled in the past two days.  Before that, winds up to one hundred miles per hour, and snow, with white-out conditions, had stopped all climbers except for a few fanatics.  I waited for more than a week until turbulence on the mountain had mostly ended.  Now, it appeared from the traces that many others had preceded me in marginal weather since that big storm.  They went around to the right of the rocks seen on the right of the picture, then to the left of The Heart, that bulge in the center, heading toward Thumb Rock, the prominent peak in the upper right.  Then I lost them below the Red Banks, that strip of red cliffs dipping from upper right to left in the picture.  Supposedly, they climbed up in one of the chimneys, those chutes of snow-covered rock-slide between the Red Banks. 

Crampons

I put on my crampons, having never worn crampons, except on the grass at home, following the package instructions, and climbed a short way up that evening, just for practice.  I had studied the art of self arrest, a necessary procedure, should one slip and start sliding endlessly down a slippery slope.  I used my ice axe for the first time, as learned from a video on YouTube, to stop me from sliding on a short slope, just for practice. 

My tent at Horse Camp

When darkness began, I slid into my small tent, inside my winter sleeping bag, on my foam pad, used more as protection of the snow, to keep it from melting under me, than for comfort or warmth, and went to sleep. 

Sometime in the night the wind became perfectly still, and I heard a faint groan, like the wail of far-away animals in distress.  It was not birds or the squirrels of the day, but muffled and strange, dreamlike, resembling far-away suffering.  Thinking it a dream I dismissed it, but awoke again, listening, waiting.  Then there was slight movement under me, almost imperceptible.  I finally realized that the snow, melting during the day, freezing at night, that the sound and motion I heard and felt came from under my bed, of changing, moving snow.