Alpine Scramble - Mount Shasta/Avalanche Gulch

1. Start from Seattle - Sunday morning May 1st at 8.00AM - 2 cars x 4 people 
2. Stop for brunch at Vancouver Washington - 170 miles usually 2.5- 3 hours. Stop here at 10-11 for brunch and stretching. Leave potentially by 12.30-1.00PM
3. Drive down to Bend - Spend the night at Bend OR (170 miles;  3-4 hours) or Klamath Falls Oregon (280 miles; 4.5 -5 hours). Reach by 5-6PM - to find a motel and get dinner, rest and sleep.

Day 2/Monday: (Watch for weather and make climbing plan)

1. If the weather window for Tuesday and Wednesday looks good, we'll drive down to Shasta city (80 - 220 miles - depending on where we stay the night)- book a motel for the night. 

2. Get climbing permit 25$ at ranger station and organize gear and rest

Day 3 & 4/ Tuesday & Wednesday: (Start climb and end climb)

Day 4th night & Day 5 Thursday (Rest and drive to Lassen?)

We will stay the night Wednesday night in Shasta city - cleaning up and getting some hot food. Sleep like city people 

Day 1: We left our luggage at Shasta Inn at Shasta city (where we had stayed the night before) and left to the trailhead after getting breakfast at Shasta bakery. 

We were one of the first cars to arrive at the Trailhead at 9 AM, as we knew the camp site gets packed and this was the first weather window of the season with another snow storm arriving in a couple of days

We had a perfect view of the route from the Trailhead and notice any avalanche dangers we might see. We were also debating to either doing the Red banks or going via the Chutes- from down below it looked like there was still good snow coverage leading upto Red-banks and Thumb rock

The Redbank route via Thumb Rock skirts the Konwakiton glacier (ever receding glacier) which opens a bergschrund later in the season, making the passage treacherous. Plus with the weather window expected to be narrow and the mountain/route expected to be crowded- we wanted to minimize as much rock fall danger, known in the chutes option

Hiding from the wind

Effects of the gusts we encountered as we headed up to camp

Claire heading up a little above helen lakes

We  got to camp at about 12.30PM and started setting up tents. This was the first snow camping experience for some participants in the trip- so it was fun. 

Jackie and Claire setting up their tents

At the campsite- we also saw an abandoned tent - which was snowed in and later learnt that a rescue had happened a couple of weeks ago and the team members had abandoned the tent

Since we were first to arrive at campsite- we got first dibs at getting access to fresh snow to melt water. So made quick work and melted as much snow to fill up our bladders, make some food for lunch / early dinner.

Jackie, Claire, Cameroon and me (Ananth) enjoying a meal

From our campsite - we could evaluate if the Red banks and thumb route would still go

Source of above image : thecloudocean.com

The route we took was imagined like below from camp ground

We had a beautiful sunset the night with all the clear skies. We had to rest up early as I had quickly realized my team was the first one to start the morning at 1AM. 

We started at 1.20AM , from a 1AM start time. But we were atleast 60 mins earlier than other groups. Which more or less split 10% of the groups going towards Thumb rock and 90% going for the gulch/gullies.

We made to Red banks right by twilight, we noticed that we had to do a steep downclimb on to the other side or do a some lose rock scrambling to get over the red banks. We trusted our snow skills - with high dagger and we downclimbed to the other side and side hilled over to Red banks

Sarah McClellan Downclimbing the snow ramp

I was sweeping, so took the last turn to get down this section. That's me side-hilling on some soft snow to connect back to the group 

The route from the redbanks with some more light 

Beautiful sunrise as we take a good break - enjoying the sunrise 

As the name sounds- it was a loooong slog in altitude, with me coughing up and the team waiting up for me. The early start was definitely helping us with the time. We saw a magical shadow of the mountain, as the sun rose up

Me wondering - why do we still have to do this!! The group was very kind to me, as they literally saw me struggling up with altitude