egor.gudaev
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta – this was an incredible team roundtrip from SoCal all the way upstate in a rented van. It kept surprising me how drastic were change in the landscape as we were passing SF. Shasta is the final (or one of finals) volcanoes in Cascade Range (as it scarcest towards the south), but you can surely feel the NW vibe (with pines, greenery) - drastic contrast to what we get in SoCal.
Knowing that Shasta is a local variation of (4th tallest) – aka Baldy (in terms of visitors) we took the Hotlum Bolum ridge, avoiding crowds on the main trail and indeed it paid us back by a decent feeling of solitude and isolation. The approach was actually quite straightforward, but that year was high on wildfires so it was somewhat hard to breath until we broke through smoke around 10k-ish ft. I don’t hold precise memory of where we camped, but I think it was 13k and the weather was good enough for us to just cowboy-style bivy near some large boulders to protect us from the wind. Because it’s a volcano, boulders are sharp and unsteady – surely something to keep in mind.
Summiting we’ve met a great number of people and at that time it indeed felt more like Baldy on summer Saturday morning, but it was ok.
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta – this was an incredible team roundtrip from SoCal all the way upstate in a rented van. It kept surprising me how drastic were change in the landscape as we were passing SF. Shasta is the final (or one of finals) volcanoes in Cascade Range (as it scarcest towards the south), but you can surely feel the NW vibe (with pines, greenery) - drastic contrast to what we get in SoCal.
Knowing that Shasta is a local variation of (4th tallest) – aka Baldy (in terms of visitors) we took the Hotlum Bolum ridge, avoiding crowds on the main trail and indeed it paid us back by a decent feeling of solitude and isolation. The approach was actually quite straightforward, but that year was high on wildfires so it was somewhat hard to breath until we broke through smoke around 10k-ish ft. I don’t hold precise memory of where we camped, but I think it was 13k and the weather was good enough for us to just cowboy-style bivy near some large boulders to protect us from the wind. Because it’s a volcano, boulders are sharp and unsteady – surely something to keep in mind.
Summiting we’ve met a great number of people and at that time it indeed felt more like Baldy on summer Saturday morning, but it was ok.