Mount Shasta

Three weeks earlier, strong wind had turned me back on this same route before I could reach the top. Coming back to finish it felt necessary, and this time I decided to do it as a single-day push instead of backpacking in and camping at Helen Lake — up and down in one long push, starting at the car at 12:30 AM and not getting back until 2:30 PM.

The Avalanche Gulch route is the standard, most direct line up Shasta, and doing it car-to-car in a day instead of splitting it over two meant a genuinely long stretch of climbing before sunrise, working up through the gulch by headlamp before the sky finally started to lighten. Reaching the summit this time, after being turned back by wind three weeks before, made the whole effort worth it — a wonderful feeling to finally stand on top after that first attempt fell short.

The numbers tell the story of the day: 12.04 miles round trip, 7,231 feet of elevation gain, nearly 11 hours of moving time and just over 14 hours total car-to-car. The climb up was hard but manageable; the descent through the same snow was the real test. My legs and energy were completely gone by the lower gulch, and walking back down through the softening afternoon snow turned out to be far more tiring than the climb itself.

Truly exhausted by the time I got back to the car — the kind of tired where the descent hurts more than the summit push did. But glad I came back to finish what the wind had stopped three weeks earlier, and glad I did it in a single day instead of needing the extra night out on the mountain.

Mount Shasta is one of the most massive volcanoes in the Cascade Range, and the Clear Creek Trail up its southeast side is a quieter, less crowded alternative to the standard Avalanche Gulch route. Day one was a straightforward hike in through pine forest from the Clear Creek Trailhead, gaining elevation gradually before breaking out above treeline into the open volcanic terrain that makes up most of the upper mountain.

Camp that first night sat on a broad shoulder of the mountain, high enough to watch the sun set over the Shasta Valley and the surrounding forests fading into haze below. The next push was the real objective: an alpine start well before dawn to get up onto the summit plateau while the scree and talus were still firm from the overnight cold, before the sun could soften everything into a loose, sliding mess underfoot.

The upper mountain is a maze of volcanic rock, old glacial ice, and lingering snowfields even in late August, with the true summit marked by a rocky pinnacle you have to scramble up and stand on top of — a small, exposed perch with nothing but sky and a sea of distant peaks in every direction. Getting up onto that final rock, with thousands of feet of air below on every side, was one of the more genuinely exciting summit moments on this whole list.

The descent back down through the crater basin and scree fields stretched into the evening, the light going long and gold across the talus as the trail dropped back toward camp. A demanding, physical trip from start to finish, but standing on top of Shasta's summit pinnacle after a full day of climbing to get there made every loose, sliding step of scree worth it.