Day 3 - Summit Attempt

“All your life you had been led by the hand like a small child, and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself.  There was no one around. . .  At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute—life or truth or beauty. . .  You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose.”—Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

I had set the alarm on my cell phone for two in the morning.  My headlamp was mounted on my helmet.  Water was tucked inside my tent where it would not freeze.  I would climb for two hours in darkness over tracks that I had seen and memorized the day before.

But the alarm did not sound, and I awoke to the first glimmers of daylight.  The cell phone did not even light up; it was completely dead.  Later I realized that in trying unsuccessfully to obtain signal for two full days, it had exhausted its battery, like a climber who tries too hard.  Still, I did not panic or immediately change the plan.  I had wanted to ascend through the Red Banks, up Misery Hill, to reach the summit about nine.  Then I could return to base camp around noon, before the thaw and its loosening of rocks on the Red Banks, which is the greatest danger on most days.  And on this day I had been advised that ice chunks from the recent storm still hung on the Red Banks and were falling in the afternoon thaws.

Climbers

Looking up at the Red Banks

I climbed with only a light pack, leaving most things at base camp, but the struggle seemed very hard.  I could not climb any faster than a certain speed learned over many hikes as my greatest long-term speed.  And today the elevation made it even slower.  Maybe I was unconsciously trying to make up lost time, but I felt tired in the first hour.  When I was still below The Heart, that bulge of rock in the center of the left picture, I took rest.  Looking up toward the Red Banks, I saw two tiny specks that appeared to be moving.  In the right picture, zoomed in, they are clearly human climbers, probably bearing skis for some sort of wild descent.  

I climbed up past The Heart and rested again, considering my progress relative to the distance remaining.  The numbers did not jive.  I could not reach the summit before noon, if I even had the energy to reach it.  I would descend through the Red Banks in the afternoon of a day that was already turning warm.  There was only one reasonable course of action.  Like I told the lady ranger a week ago when she advised me not to go up because a storm is coming, “I am crazy, but I am not stupid.”

I began a slow descent, disappointed, but determined to enjoy the day.  Above  Helen Lake, I saw the camps of climbers already packing up to descend. 

Near them was a small moving speck, which you can barely see in the left picture, and can see clearly in the right zoom.  It was the only living thing, other than humans, I had seen since Horse Camp. 

Other climbers passed me going down, and where the slope allowed it, they were sliding, glissading, and having a good rollick for their efforts. 

They took my picture doing the same.

Day 2 - Helen Lake

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence.  I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.  I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life”—Leo Tolstoy, “Family Happiness”

A clear breezeless morning awoke me, and in cold, I carefully sorted and packed for the snow-climb to Helen Lake.  Timberline was just a few hundred yards up the slope, and its steepness would increase as the day progressed.  I packed so that things I might need—mitten-gloves, ski mask, goggles and snow shoes—could be retrieved without laying anything on the crusted snow where they could easily slide all the way back to Horse Camp.  Crampons biting into the crusted snow, ice axe in one hand, ski pole in the other, I started up Avalanche Gulch.

Looking across Strawberry Valley
 and the Sacramento River
from just above Horse Camp 

The snow had a crust, caused by melting during the day, then freezing at night.  I had reluctantly brought snowshoes because some advisors said the crust could break through in the afternoon descent, leaving half my body beneath the surface with no way to proceed.  But for now, crampons prevented sliding, the crust prevented falling through, as I trudged up the slope.  

Lenticular Clouds

Lenticular Clouds

Before the sun came over the ridge, a strange swirling of clouds began to accumulate over the summit.  I watched them spin around it, tornado fashion, but without the darkness of a tornado.  It was my first sighting of lenticular clouds since arriving in Dunsmuir, and I remembered the warning—lenticulars indicate high wind on the summit, and climbing is not advised.  But I would not go to the summit today, and from where I stood, angled to the slant of the peak, wind was light.  

As I climbed higher, temperature lowered and thawing had clearly lessened with elevation in the preceding days, which caused the snow-crust to become thin.  Then I fell through up to my knee, and again up to my waist.  I considered the snowshoes strapped to my pack, but also assessed the steepness of the slope, great enough now that I was traversing up at an angle, rather than going straight up as I did earlier.  I did not think I could traverse such a steep place in those floppy snowshoes, having never used them except on gentle slopes.  

The Cabin at Horse Camp

Mt. Shasta Town in distance

I am not one to act quickly or make changes without thinking for some time.  So I sat there in the snow and looked down on the cabin of Horse Camp, zoomed in on it for the right picture, and considered the town of Mt. Shasta in the distance, from where I took pictures of this place yesterday morning.  It seemed that perhaps I was in a place of drifted snow where the base under the crust was soft, allowing the crust to break easier.  If that were true, I could work up closer to the ridge and find snow with a harder base and a more stable crust.  The plan worked, and within fifteen minutes I was traversing near the ridge, quite proud of having solved a problem.  

I met a man, coming down as I was going up.  He looked strong, trim, and in good spirits.  “Did you make it?” I asked  “No,” he said.  “ Wind?”  I asked.  “No, a perfect day.”  I asked no more, but said that few people even think of trying.  He did not want to talk, and I watched him continue down the slope.

I cannot say it is beautiful up here.  The views from below had convinced me that rock, ice and snow were the total experience, and now I was getting what I expected, but up close.  And with the temperature rising above freezing, it was like a damp religious place with nowhere to sit except on damp snow, and the wind like the sound of prayer, of my father kissing me and sending me off for the first time to Longfellow Elementary School, and I felt a bit homesick.

“A beauty not explicable is dearer than a beauty we can see to the end of”—Emerson

Campsite prepared by someone

Helen Lake is just over the rise

I figured I was near Helen Lake when I happened to see human tracks leading to a strange digging on a flat place to my right.  On investigating, someone had dug a shelter in the snow, built a snow wall against the wind, and had camped.  Did they carry a shovel and move all that snow just for a one-night stay?  I rejected it at first, because the base camp for reaching the summit tomorrow was Helen Lake, everyone had told me that—that frozen, snow-covered flat place, which had to be just up and over that rock outcrop you see in the right picture.

Making water from snow

Making water from snow

But this place was close to Helen Lake, and if I slept here, I would be alone.  Something about the stark emptiness of this isolated place seemed in conflict with groups, with meeting other climbers, the giving and receiving of advice, the telling of stories.  So I laid down my pack and set out to make water from snow.  

My camp below Helen Lake

My camp below Helen Lake

After resting, and with plenty of daylight, I climbed without the heavy pack up to Helen Lake and looked down on my sheltered campsite, still surprised that someone had exerted all that energy to make it.  

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. 

The Folks of Dunsmuir

A steam engine scrapped in 1952

Caboose visiting Dunsmuir railroad yard

I have often thought that a small town, constrained against growth by a deep valley with a river running through it, bypassed by the main highway, and maybe where at night the mournful wail of a freight train brings up an old hobo song, and where the folks don’t get around much, and the men are of a working sort who have their philosophy well in hand—that such a town is where I’d like to settle.

Yesterday along the main street of Dunsmuir, the town gathered for the 71^st celebration of Railroad Days, complete with parade, cotton candy, country music, fire trucks and a speech by the mayor.  The Union Pacific brought in some old Zephyr cars and early train engines which they keep in storage and tow up and down the track for small towns to remember.

Tavelers Hotel on Dunsmuir Ave,
102 rooms, for sale
at auction for $400,000 with no bids 

house at 4314 Pine Street
for sale at $44,900 

On the historical tour, I learned that the Traveler’s Hotel, with its 102 rooms on main street, is for sale at $400,000, and a decent house just off the center of town is asking $44,900.  The original town was, understandably, down by the railroad, but almost all of it burned down in 1903.  The buildings on Dunsmuir Avenue, up from the tracks and the river, date from the 1020’s when it was the main road for traveling north.  Then in 1961 the I-5 Interstate bypassed the town and allowed it to remain quiet and untrafficed until today.  Of course, the lumber industry failed here as it did all up the Cascade range, and the town fell from a population of 5,000 to just 1,600 today.  Tourism seems the only economic hope for Dunsmuir, but with the state’s closing of the parks, even that seems crunched.  

Cornewr of Dunsmuir Avenue
and Pine Street, looking east

Still, the lovely setting of Dunsmuir in its cozy valley with its lush river surely promise a good long-term future in tourism.

My tour guide, Jan, after the tour ended and the parade was about to begin

The parade yesterday featured commercially extravagant floats, just like the rose parade in Pasadena.  These cyclists promote product “A” through subliminal hints.

And here, fathers sell pull-carts, using their children as bait.

And these singers, in appreciation of the hobo lifestyle, sell that great institution through their website at http://www.hobo.com/

I took this picture because I worked for the California Division of Forestry, as it was called then, and even drove a truck like this, and chopped brush on fire lines.

Of course, the US Forest Service, with Smoky Bear is represented, also an outfit I spent a summer working for.  It was back in the days when a lightning fire was to be extinguished at any cost.

But I had to walk out of town, away from the commotion, for some time in the woods.  As in Pasadena, so here.