[TR] Mt. Shasta - Clear Creek Route 9/4/2015

[montynet]

Trip: Mt. Shasta - Clear Creek Route

 

Date: 9/4/2015

 

Trip Report:

A group of 4 of us decided to embark on a California adventure. We left Seattle area around 6:00 PM and drove down to Cali. We stopped in Albany, Oregon to get some rest. On Saturday 9/5/15 we continued the drive, we reached the Trnity-Shasta forest around 12:00 PM. The forest road to the Clear Creek trail head is very sandy, I highly recommend an AWD vehicle but I did see some sedans and even a prius at the trail head so it can be done without AWD. We reached the trail head at 1:10 PM and by 1:30 PM after paying for our self serve climbing permit ($25 per person) we started our hike. We were equipped with Ice Axes, Crampons, Helmets, but we did not use any of that gear. The route itself is very straight forward and there's a faint boot path all the way to about 10,000 ft. At this time of year there's hardly any snow left on that route so it was scree and sand all the way to the summit. Around 11,000 ft things get interesting as there's several boot paths but they all go up, some are zig zags others are straight up. Around 13,400 ft there's a false summit and there's two ways to get around it, one is to go up a gully that's mostly solid rock and the other is to continue in scree. I chose gully up and scree in the way down. After the false summit, the grade becomes mild but the whole route is never too steep. Once in the crater(s), you go around the true summit to get on a ridge line that takes you there. There's a summit register. It took me around 7 hours to get to the true summit and 4hr30min to get down to base camp. At base camp, there's a spring around 8500 ft. Only two of us reached the summit as our other two climbing/hiking buddies were affected by elevation and tiredness and turned back around 11,000 ft. We reached the trailhead around 4:15 PM and started driving back, we stopped in Shasta (city) to get some grub and stopped in Medford, Oregon for rest. We reached Seattle area around 3pm on 9/7/15.

 

Here's my gpx file, if interested: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57379305/Mt.%20Shasta%20-%20Clear%20Creek.gpx

 

Shasta along i-5

shasta from hiking trail

making our way up the mountain

sunrise

looking back at route

gully, mostly solid rock

final ridge line, looking at a sister summit, but not true summit

true summit

register

tallest point pic. Did not feel like standing in that boulder with the wind

on way back, a bivy site around 10,000 ft

 

Gear Notes:

Hiking and camping gear only.

 

Approach Notes:

Forest road to trail head is very sandy.