“When I first caught sight of Mt. Shasta, over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley, I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since.”
- John Muir, 1874
Mount Shasta is one of the great stand alone mountains in the world and is widely considered to be one of the Earths sacred mountains. It is one of the most worshiped mountains in the world starting back with the Native Americans as early as 600 BC and today is home to over 100 spiritual secs.
Shasta has many meanings to many different people over 1,000′s of years. Portals, vortexes, a cosmic power point, a UFO landing spot, the entry point into the 5th dimension, a source of magic crystals, home of the great spirit, center of creation, to name a few. One of my favorites is about the Lemurians. The Lemurians are said to be super-humans who are so spiritually advanced that they can change themselves from material to spiritual at will.
As good as all these stories are they had nothing to do with me going to Shasta. It was the stories of world class corn snow and descents over 7,000 vertical feet that hooked me. So finally after too many years of claiming “this is the year for Shasta” I made it happen. On June 10th I met up with 14 other sideways snow sliders from California and the North West for a harmonic convergence of corn slashing. The experience was so enlightening that a week later I doubled down with a group of four in search for the 5th dimension.
The first time up we hiked the South West Face starting at the Bunny Flats trail head. It is the main route up the mountain and the bootpack is a stairway to heaven allowing for the easiest 7,000 ft hike you will ever do.
Mount Shasta is 14,179ft tall and rises 10,000 ft above the valley floor and is the only high mountain around for 100′s of miles (other then Mt Lassen 10,462). This makes for some of the fastest moving and wild cloud formations I have ever witnessed in the mountains. This is a view of our line of the south face.
Shasta is a mirage. What seems like 20 minutes away could be two hours away.
Brian Sizer somewhere on the upper half of the mountain. He has a cabin in Oregon that looks right at this face and built the Shasta skate park.
Jeff Curley is a professional snowboard photographer. He shoots 90% freestyle snowboarding and when he is not working can be found on his splitboard.
Darron Rahlves around 13,000 ft. hiking through boot top deep snow on July 19th. He called me a few days before this trip asking if I wanted to go to Shasta. He had just flown by the peak on his way home from a week of corn skiing in AK and was feeling the Shasta pull.
The center of creation. Also know as the summit of Mount Shasta. Check the photos from the first trip of Ralph, Kael and I standing on the same spot a week earlier. It is amazing how quickly the mountain went from burnt out and dry rocks to a mid winter ice cap.
Coming over the summit rollover. The top few hundred feet had a weird rime ice texture to it. It was smooth to ride and easy to sink an edge into it.
Once over the roll we were greated with 4,000ft of the best corn snow I have ever ridden.
