A tale of two mountains

Mount Shasta and Mount Rainier, Pacific North West

– Let's jump on a plane to Seattle, and go and climb Mount Rainier!

Yet another adventure was hatched over a pint with Sean, this time it would also involve Mike Bradley, an old friend of Sean's now living in San Jose in California. Over the next few months, the plan evolved:

– Why don't we fly to San Francisco, then we can drive 800 miles north to Rainier, and back again afterwards...much 'arder.

– Even better, why don't we climb Mount Shasta on the way for practice!

– Let's climb Shasta and Rainier, in a clapped out van with nothing to listen to but a tape of an early 80's punk rock band from Macclesfield, called The Macc Lads, who were once famous in Belize.

– Wow, that's so crazy it might even work!

It nearly did.

Mount Shasta was good. After landing in San Francisco, we'd eventually got onto the I5, the interstate highway that runs from San Diego to Seattle. We stayed one night in Shasta City, a classic small town, USA, where the main street is called Main Street, and the diner is packed with locals, serves pancakes with all the fixings for breakfast, and free refills of coffee.

Eventually we had more coffee than was good for us, and a cunning plan was put into action. This involved driving around the mountain to the north side, which retains all the snow and has several steep hanging glaciers. (It was on the way here that I found out about the Macc Lads tape.) The route starts gently from a trailhead, up through forest and flower meadows, before turning up a gentle incline, whose angle basically increases more and more until it gets overhanging (ie at least 45 degrees) below the summit. We camped at about 10,000' on a little scree platform to one side of a snow slope. The following morning, we traversed across the snow onto one of the glaciers, and roped up. It is quite some time since I'd been on a snow-covered glacier, and I'd forgotten how 'interesting' it could be to navigate through a crevasse field. Imagine trying to tip-toe, in crampons, over something like Rowten pot, on a rapidly softening snow bridge. We dog-legged to avoid a bergschrund, and started up a series of steepening snow slopes towards the summit. The snow had been rotted by the sun into ridges about a boot-width across, and never quite capable of taking the weight of a person, so we took turns to break trail. At last we reached a break of slope, and arrived on a rather fine rocky summit point. A fine route, and one seldom done, so it seemed!

The next day we ploughed on up I5, with glimpses of snowy peaks in the Cascades to the east. The best was the view of Mount Hood, off the bridge over the Columbia river at Portland. North of here is Mount St Helens territory. When this blew up in 1980, a piece the size of Ingleborough disappeared! A bit further north on the I5, we stopped for coffee next to a large shed advertising 'Mount St Helens experience - 20 minutes'. We hung around to see if the doors would open to reveal billowing clouds of ash, and visitors staggering out, white haired and clutching their eyes, but it didn't happen.

Steep snow on Mount Shasta, Sean Kelly climbing.

Mike Bradley, on steep snow on Mount Shasta.

Mount Rainier is one mountain many Americans aspire to climb. Lying 800 miles north of Shasta, it has a much more impressive array of glaciers, and snow and ice. It is more accessible than peaks in Alaska, but still challenging. There are no huts as such, and one has to pack supplies in from trailheads at about 4500', typically enough for three days. Since it stands proud of the surrounding peaks by several thousand feet or so, it generates its own weather. This is the most common reason for attempts to fail, as we were about to find out. The most treacherous conditions are when the peak collects a cloud cap, which signifies high winds at altitude.

Actually, our original scheme was to climb a route known as Liberty Ridge, but it turned out to be too late in the season to cross the upper Carbon glacier, to reach the base of the ridge. So we settled for the classic Emmons-Winthrop route. Two days later we reached our high point at around 12,000', when we realised we were climbing up into the aforesaid cloud cap conditions. Only a French Canadian team continued above here, turning round not much later when the visibility dropped to a few feet. This was frustrating to say the least, as the previous two days had been perfect conditions...bugger! We'd started our summit day at 11 and were back in camp by 6 (11pm and 6am that is!) but now decided to pull out rather than wait another day (basically we'd run out of food and fuel). Turned out that conditions the following day weren't much better, so we'd made the right choice.

Mount Rainier, the day after the summit attempt.

Rather than slog back down the I5, we headed for the interior of Washington, and down to re-cross the Columbia above Dulles. Here we turned west for a while, to pass under the slopes of Mount Hood. A spectacular banner of cloud was streaming from the peak, generated by the high winds. We headed south again, on the eastern side of the Cascade mountains, and into a region of interminable forests. That evening, we decided to aim for Crater Lake.

Until the rim is reached, this is just an unprepossessing range of hills. In fact, much more impressive is the rock spire of Mount Thielsen to the north. But the hills are actually a crater edge, guarding a spectacular azure lake, which wasn't 'discovered' until prospectors stumbled across it in 1853 whilst looking for the Lost Cabin gold mine. Of course, the locals had known about the lake all along, but had kept quiet about it, as well as the location of the Lost Cabin gold mine.

The next day, it was basically a long haul back to San Jose, which we reached around 5pm. Just time to drop the van off, have a few beers in a bar in Sunnyvale, finally back to Mike's house for an impromptu party and a farewell listening to the Macc Lads tape.

Adapted from CPC Record 61, 10-12 (Jan 2001).