Conditions Report
Report from Tuesday, June 4
In 1870, German biologist Ernst Haeckel suggested that a sunken continent called Lemuria could be the ancestral home of humanity, potentially explaining the “missing links” in the fossil record of early humans.
Haeckel was not a subscriber to Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
In America, Lemuria has become most closely associated with Mount Shasta in northern California, which according to Frederick Spence Oliver’s 1894 book A Dweller on Two Planets and other occultist writers is the last refuge of the survivors of so-called Lemuria.
Legend has it that they live there in a jewel-encrusted underground city called Telos.
Well, if there are any sort of Lemurians living in Mount Shasta, they were pissed on Tuesday when we tried to ski off its summit.
A brutal 3:20 a.m. wake-up in the back of my car that was parked at the Bunny Flat trailhead was how I started the day.
It was still the dead of night and the sky was illuminated by a web of glowing gems.
This must be what they call magic.
By 4:25 I was skinning solo in the dark.
After hiking for miles on dirt to get to the snowline in Mammoth where I was based the past two weeks, it was a major blessing to be able to tour straight from the parking lot.
The silhouette of the forest contrasted greatly with the shine of the starry sky as I walked through the silent trees.
Once I gained a few hundred feet of elevation I started to feel the wind.
I knew that a swift breeze down here meant trouble up high…
I went up through the long, windy, sun-cupped gully and made it to the base of Shasta’s giant Avalanche Gulch just as daylight started to creep its way in.
The mountain was visible and the top was shrouded in a thick, fast-moving cloud that gave the peak the appearance of a huge mushroom.
With how fast the clouds were moving I knew a summit push was going to be impossible unless the weather suddenly chilled the hell out.
I toured up Avalanche Gulch’s huge undulating terrain consisting of big giant curves, sub-gullies, and mini-ridges that all formed one mega avalanche path.
Thankfully it’s June and avalanche danger is next to nill otherwise I probably would not be touring up this face like this.
I kept a cool pace, reaching the high camp in about two hours or so.
I went up as high as made sense, stopping a few hundred feet short of rockfall that had occurred sometime over the previous few days.
Here, it was very windy, and a wet, icy wind gusted sharp flakes into my person, causing me to wince and immediately turn the other direction.
Now, I would wait.
As I was waiting to see if by some miracle the clouds would lift off the summit and the wind would suddenly die, a fellow traveler named Nic who was also headed for the summit came up to me and we decided to pass the time conversating with each other.
We sat for a while, watching the day grow brighter and the wind seemingly only get more powerful.
It became hard to hear each other talk after a while due to the extremely loud gusts of sifting ice.
It wasn’t getting any better.
At least it wasn’t hard to turn around; the decision was obvious.
Hard are the bails that are ambiguous and require thinking, like very minor rockfall in a non-exposed spot or a partner who maybe doesn’t have his head screwed on straight that day.
We were also really cold at that point from waiting so that made it easy too.
Time for a bail beer.
As Nic and I dropped into a 3,500′ run back down the parking lot, we were surprised to find soft, slushy snow most of the way down.
The skiing was actually great until the huge suncups in the gully at the bottom.
It must not have froze the night before, making for some smooth, easy sailing down the wide Avalanche Gulch back down to the trailhead.
The sun was shining, and back in the forest, signs of wind were minimal even though it was still gusting likely 100 mph at the top.
We got back to the parking lot to warm temps and overall beautiful California conditions.
It was disappointing only to make it about halfway up Shasta but the smooth snow down Avalanche Gully and nice weather in the parking area accompanied with the good company of other bailers chillin’ out in the lot made up for it, and I didn’t leave sad.
I knew one day I’d be back for the top.
Just going to have to bring an offering to the Lemurians next time and hope they let me in.
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To learn more about current conditions on Mount Shasta, visit the Mount Shasta Avalanche Center Website.
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