Postmortem

May 15, 2016: This story stars the year prior and is fundamentally important to understand how a failure was turned into a success. First, a little background and context. I had graduated college in May 2015 from a small engineering school in Massachusetts in the city of Worcester (WPI). Shortly after graduating I drove out to California in my jeep for a year long internship at Apple. This is where I met Ronen (Old Man Winter) who was a full time employee at the time. We were given a somewhat boring task together and during its completion bonded over many mutual interests such as music, battlebots, and the great outdoors. When Spring time rolled around he invited me out for a "climb". It is important to understand that mountains on the east coast are relatively small. Things like altitude sickness or avalanches get little to no attention. So without really knowing what I was getting into I just said "sure"! Old Man Winter did a great job planning the trip, communicating risks and hazard, putting together gear lists, and more. I rallied the gear I needed and off we went after work one Friday afternoon with a few other friends (PVD and his wife, Windy).

It's a long drive from the bay area (6 hours with traffic). We arrived onsite maybe around 9PM and I slept on a tarp behind a tree by the parking lot. Brutal. The stars were nice though. Anyway, we got up around 4AM and were in motion before 5AM. It was not long before I realized how screwed I was. I got sick to my stomach from the early start and poor breakfast choices. I was slow on the lead in from lack of proper skinning technique (I was on a splitboard) and was having a hard time keeping grip on the firm snow. We regrouped as a team and decided to split up. I stayed back with PVD while the others continued. We slowly made our way to Helen Lake (~10,000ft) and stopped there. Clouds were rolling in fast and it was getting dark. Thunder roared in the distance. 'A' group was way above us but we did not have eyes on them. Before we knew it there was a loud crack of thunder and hail started pouring down. Screw it - we were out of there! PVD and I dropped in from Helen Lake as fast as we could. My quads burned from the short climb up. We made it back safely to the car and the 'A' group had caught up. We scrambled to get our gear in the car as the weather intensified and turned more wet. Once we were in we grabbed some burgers in town as one does and headed home.

As brutal as that day was I still had a blast. I was just so stoked coming down the mountain on this huge wide open face with crazy weather blowing down - total adventure. I vividly remember saying out loud right then and there by the car that "Next year, I'm going to come back"...

May 2016 - April 2017: I have always been an objective minded person. I don't like going through life just kind of winging it. If there is something I really want to do I sit down and devise a plan on how I can make it happen and by when. It takes alot of discipline. Usually checklists and spreadsheets are involved. It's a fun process - I enjoy it actually. I told myself after the first attempt that I want to come back, summit, and then snowboard down, all in one day. It's a big day - 7000ft in 5.5miles is no joke. And there are very real consequences when things go wrong on Shasta. People get seriously injured or die every year on Shasta from avalanches, rock fall, slide outs, and exposure. I had no real world experience in this kind of stuff. It was a complex problem but I figured it could be solved if I stayed focused on 3 basic areas: physical strength, technical skills, and hazard/risk analysis. First, I needed to get serious. Get obsessed. I read mountaineering books, did gear research, and talked to more experienced climbers. I practiced with my gear, and got to know how to use it more efficiently. When winter season started I was in a good position to start applying the knowledge. I practiced avalanche rescue and did smaller backcountry tours throughout the season which lead to larger climbs like Matterhorn Peak. During the week I did intense cardio exercises every single day on an elliptical to get my heartrate up. I even went on a diet with 0 sugar, fried food, or Alcohol. Never felt better in my life. I called this the "Shasta diet". I did resort skiing over the weekends to practice my downhill skills. I thought through the nitty gritty details (layering, sun protection, pack weight...). I held myself accountable by talking to people about what I was trying to achieve. Everything I did was for Shasta! This became an obsessive lifestyle around one single goal. Mountaineering is really selfish - you have to make sacrifices, you have to ditch other plans and be less social. But this was important to me. End of April rolled around, it was time to move out.

April 29, 12PM: Old Man Winter and I loaded up the Shasta van and headed out. The plan was to get to the trailhead by early evening, do final gear prep, and get to sleep. We were planning on a 1AM start time. It was going to be a long day. As we drove up route 5 we passed by a Cleveland Model 247. Looked it up later, it's a trench/cable plow. Gnarly. We arrived to the base of Bunny Hill Flat by 5PM. This was the first time I had seen Shasta since the previous climb. It was looking primed and ready! Weather was calling for a bit of wind but otherwise clear. Avalanche risk was low. I was anxious to get started. We were sleeping by 6:30PM (trying to at least).

April 30, 12:03AM: It was impossible to sleep. Between the awkward hours of the day and general anxiety I had no chance. We were originally going to wake up at 12:30AM or so but we were just lying there awake so no reason not to start moving. We took our time, had some good breakfasts, did a final gear check, and bathroom run. We were in motion by 1:24AM (I grabbed a quick screenshot on my phone). It's good to have smaller objectives throughout the way moving one step at a time. Focus on the next objective rather than the summit. First up - Helen Lake. I actually suffered a similar stomach ache within 30 minutes of moving. I was starting to feel doubts if I would just be repeating the previous year. I took a deep breath, removed a layer to cool down, and paced myself more intentionally. Within another 30 minutes I felt good again. Ok, cool - one problem down, keep moving. By 4:30AM we were at Helen Lake. That's a steady 1000ft/hour pace. We took a solid 20minute break to sit down, eat some more calories and trade our splitboards for crampons and an ice axe. It was time for Avalanche Gulch which climbs 2400ft in less than a mile. Our next objective was the red banks at the top of the gulch.

April 30, 5:00AM: We were already in Avalanche Gulch by this point. I was entering new territory. The sun started coming up and it felt nice. As we progressed up the climb I was feeling really good. I was cautiously but comfortably making steady progress and felt strong. The altitude was having effects on me but I could manage it. I actually don't have many photos from Avalanche Gulch unfortunately. I was pretty focused on the task at hand. As we made our way up the weather started to turn as the wind predicted in the forecast became our reality. High gusts forced us to slow down and make interval sprints in between. I had to replace my sun glasses with goggles because small bits of firm snow and ice were getting sprayed into my eyes. The intensity picked up and we were forced to reevaluate. It was getting sketchy. The strong winds could be enough to topple you over, putting you into a serious self arrest situation. We dug a snow pit in the side of the mountain and decided to wait it out. We wanted to be at summit no later than 2PM. This would give us plenty of daylight and good snow before it all became slush. We determined we had about an hour worth of delay we could account for before needing to call it. Fortunately in an hour the wind calmed down. Shasta was giving us a test, and it looks like we passed. It was time to move on. We continued boot packing up the mountain and by around noon finished Avalanche Gulch and were standing at the Red Banks - 12,820ft. Misery hill was our next target.

April 30, 1:12PM: Misery hill is not steep, but you are exhausted from Avalanche Gulch and still have another 1,300ft to go. A total slog. I was starting to really feel the altitude effects on the hill. I was slow and having a hard time focusing. Once we got to the top of the hill we decided to drop the splitboards to save some weight and bag the summit which was only another few hundred feet of vertical. The snow had turned really firm and penitentes had formed. The wind was howling again. We were approaching our turn around cutoff so we had to move. Just after 2PM we were standing on top of the summit of Mount Shasta! We snagged some pictures and took in the views. Fortunately the descent should be nice and fast!

Always feels great heading down on a snowboard instead of by foot! Not going to lie though, the snow quality was not great until about 11,000ft. By Helen Lake it was classic spring corn. Low angle cruiser back to the car! It took us maybe an hour including the transition. I've been told recently that the skiing on the western side of the mountain (off of Casaval ridge) is really fun. I'd love to check that out too some day with the goal of fun skiing rather than summit objective.

There was still plenty of snow that year to ski right back to the van. We celebrated the moment, packed up, got our burgers and made the trek back home.

Shasta is a California classic, and rightfully so. The journey I embarked on to turn a complete disaster of an attempt into a success will always serve as a reminder to myself to keep pushing forward. Until we meet again Shasta!