Mt. Shasta

It's been said that the "top of this hill is just the bottom of another mountain." For this past weekend, I'll have to flat-out disagree. A few of us decided it would be neat to climb a big mountain - so the results are shown. We bit off a bit more than we possibly could chew, but there's nothing like a Winn and his stubbornness when it comes to finishing a presented challenge.

Here's the group (minus one taking the picture) at the vehicle parking ~ 6,900 ft.
Here's our base camp: ~ 3.2 miles hike from the car - ~9,000 ft

Here's the view looking back on base camp: ~ 10,500 ft (if you look real close you may see the yellow speck of a tent right of the big snow chunk.
Here is yours truly: cresting the saddle that leads to a very gulping view of 2 more hours to hike! ~13,200 ft.


Here's the view from the saddle crest: 2 hours to the summit - I almost turned back!

But, this is proof that I didn't! I was a tired little boy at this point. Mt. Shasta summit - 14,126 ft
This is the view from the summit looking back at the saddle.


This is an aerial view of Mt. Shasta and the route we took: West Face. The red dot is base camp, the green line, our path of accent. There's obviously a bit more snow in this picture.

It was an amazing experience, extremely difficult from an endurance and mental standpoint, but well worth the effort. Coming down was a lot easier because we slid down on the snow: rough, but made you feel a lot better escaping the altitude effects. One 14er down!