Shasta and Lassen July 26 & 27, 2003
In place of the usual photo report, here is a text report. My camera was all loaded up with new batteries and a 256MB memory card, but I forgot it at home and missed many worthy photos.
I drove to Mt. Shasta City Friday night and parked on what looked like a quiet side street with no development on one side. It turned out the reason there was no development was because of a railroad track just past the trees and bushes. A rather heavily used railroad track. So much for a quiet night's sleep, but at least I was close to the Black Bear Diner for a big breakfast in the morning. At dawn the summit of Shasta was obscurred in gloomy dark clouds.
After eating I started around the mountain for the Brewer Creek trailhead. The weather was looking more promising but the summit was still obscurred. After travelling along FR 31 for a while I started seeing signs of the massive thunderstorms that had moved through on Wednesday and Thursday, areas where a lot of water had flowed across the road. These areas grew larger as I came around to the east side of the mountain, and eventually I came to a spot over 100' long where someone had started across, started sinking in the wet sand, and backed out. Maybe it wasn't the smartest thing, but instead of going to the right like they did, I went left, held my speed and started across. As I started to sink I remembered I was still in 2wd. Oops. I kept my foot steady on the gas and hit the 4wd button, but it won't engage under power, and I could feel the truck slow down and branches start whacking the underside. Somehow I just made it across, and then of course the 4wd light went on when I took my foot off the gas. At this point I started worrying about other hazards ahead, because I definitely didn't want to go back that way. There were several more washes along the way, but it wasn't until I got to a creek crossing that there was any more trouble. I remember this creek from years past, it's the only one on this road that runs year round. It had jumped it's banks and majorly damaged the road. Foot deep ruts, some still full of rushing water ran perpendicular to the road. I couldn't even see the main creek over the bank it had overrun. I scoped the best line up the bank and forced the truck up it, and then drove down the raging creek on the other side, took a left up it's far bank and then jammed through another big rut. I think I need an alignment now. Fortunately there were no more serious obstacles on FR 31 after this because I don't think I could have driven back the other way over that creek. This was probably the biggest adventure of the whole weekend, sure wish I hadn't forgotten my camera. There was more damage on the road from FR 31 up to the trailhead, but the washout that finally turned out to be impassible was on the last switchback from the trailhead, which was only about 1/3 mile up through the woods.
By this time the clouds had cleared out of most of the sky, leaving only the summit with a fleecy white cap. By the time I'd marched up past the tree line the summit was in the clear. The only bummer was the strong wind out of the southwest that was always trying to push me backwards. I left the car at 8:15 and by about 12:15 I was at about 12,000 feet, which is where the tastey white snow ended and was replaced by dirtier, more cupped snow to the top. My aching feet told me this was enough. Two telemarkers showed up about a half hour later and told me that they weren't going any further either, so this helped justify my decision to go down. I hiked up a little further into the middle of the snowfield, at the very top of the decent looking snow, and strapped in. What can I say, the turns were extraordinary. The snow was perfect, about 6" of corn on a firm base, surprisingly smooth. It was the kind of snow you can carve a board into, and the rebound from that turn will spring you into the next turn. This went on for about 2500 vertical feet and then I had 1500 feet more of a firmer, bumpier snow, but this was still better than walking down. A nice run overall, the 3 guys with skis and boards that I passed on the way up could see they were going to get something good the next day. When I stopped at the end of the snow the two telemarkers were coming down the best part of the snowfield, they both left the most consistent track of perfect turns I've ever seen. This contrasted with my more random sets of turns wherever the snow happened to look best.
Since I didn't make the summit, I decided to head towards Lassen so I could top out on something over the weekend. I went via FR 11 through Big Bend, and stopped at the hot springs there. My truck turned 30k along the way, a most appropriate place, in the woods, in 4wd, on the way to somewhere cool, perfect. The springs were nice and the river was flowing a little higher than usual, maybe from the recent rains. From there I followed one of the branches of the Pitt River upstream, and it was ultra scenic. Too bad the river wasn't left in a more natural state, but even the occassional power plants and reservoirs were very impressive. I was tempted to stop and camp along the river but given how bad the mosquitos have been this year I decided to check out Burney Mtn, which on the map showed a road to the top of the 7800' mountain.
Burney Mountain turned out to be a little harder to find than it should have been, but mostly because I kept getting lured off the correct track by the many logging roads. These were fun to a degree, but I was happy when I finally found the road up. There was a gate a little ways before the summit, but the view was spectacular, I could see the lights of the Central Valley towns to the southeast, Burney to the north, and not much to the south and west. The stars were bright. I opened all my windows and settled down to go to sleep when I heard the buzzing of a mosquito, and then another, and another. What were they doing on this mountain? There couldn't be any standing water for miles! Yet there they were. I put the windows up but there was one little bugger I never caught and she plagued me through much of the night.
The next day I drove up to Lassen. The snow near the top of the peak didn't look that wonderful so I decided to leave my board at the truck and just do a day hike. Mistake! The hike up was nice, took about an hour, I must have passed at least 50 people on the trail. It was funny to hear people at the top talk about what a "grueling" hike it was, it seemed incredibly easy compared to Shasta. On top of this mountain there were hundreds of what looked like small monarch butterflies. Not sure what they were looking for. The snow turned out to be quite nice, wished I brought the board and saved myself 3/4 of the walk down. As I did the walk down I encountered 2 skiers and a snowboarder. I told the snowboarder the snow was perfect and he gave me a skeptical look. I didn't see him go down but that snow was fine, hope he knew what he was doing, cause it was very fine, very steep snow.
I drove south from Lassen on 89 and then took rt 70 down the Feather River Canyon to Orinda. I'd heard it was a spectacular canyon. I had such high expectations that I was immediately dissappointed by the scenery, but it kept getting better and better until I was quite impressed. The kayakers navigating the water raging between enormous white boulders looked quite impressed too. When I reached the central valley I couldn't believe how much water there was, at least for California. There was a reservoir covered with boats and jet skis, then a river, many sloughs, field after field of rice, occassionally corn on some of the higher ground, then finally the Sacramento River and I was back on the 5, heading south through familiar territory. A good weekend that left me wanting to head straight back there soon.
