A forum that'll feed your need for exploring the limitless adventure possibilities found in "other" places. Post trip reports or ask questions about outdoor adventures beyond the Sierra Nevada here.
I hope Shasta is close enough to the Sierra to not get me booted off for asking this
I've been researching doing the loop around Shasta and I'm surprised how little info I'm finding. I have the write up in the Backpacking CA book and found a single 2013 trip report. I'm wondering if it's simply not on people's radars or if people aren't doing it because it sucks?
If anyone out there has done it, particularly if you've done it in recent years (i.e., in the climate change era), I'd be interested in any insights you might have. How's the water situation if you go after the bulk of snowmelt (I don't want to carry ice axe)? Is it worth doing?
Part of the problem is that it is difficult to predict the snow/ice level far in advance. Friends of mine did it a few decades ago. If you go during solid snow season, you have to decide between X-C skis or snowshoes, but you are always on a slant as you try to contour around. If you go during summer, you'll use just boots. I always found it better to just concentrate on going to the summit and back.
Most Mt Shasta hikers are familiar with the popular John Muir route up Avalanche Gulch to the Summit and have read about the chilly night he experienced on the Mountain. Few are familiar with his Circumnavigation of Mt Shasta. To Muir the Circumnavigation hardly "sucked." Rather to him "far better than climbing [Mt . Shasta] is going around its warm fertile base, enjoying its bounties like a bee circling around a bank of flowers."
As you know, there is no Circumnavigation Trail, but the hiker is rewarded by selecting his own path. I have never done it, but it sounds as if it would challenge one's strength, endurance, and planning skills.
I have an early addition of the Mt Shasta Book by Selters and Zanger (Wilderness Press, Berkeley). The book devotes several pages to the "Circum-Shasta Hike, 25-35 miles, difficult." You might want to check it out. There are several more recent editions of their book. Perhaps they have expanded on this interesting and adventuresome topic in the more recent additions.
The challenge would be hitting the right elevation so that you're high enough to have easy cross country travel with views near tree line, but low enough that you're not mountaineering or side hilling through annoying scree all day. The route is obviously going to be trail free for a majority of the time, snow often helps with those conditions.
Also, all of Shasta's sides are not created equal. The southern & western sides are heavily used, populated, and Old Ski Bowl even allows motorized recreation. While the northern half has a bigger wilderness area, and has more waterfalls & glaciers, so it would probably make a better backpacking/hiking area. It's not as sexy as saying you "circumnavigated Shata", but it might make for a better trip if you just hung out in that area.
"Adventure is just bad planning." - Roald Amundsen
Also, I have a blog no one reads. Please do not click here.
Alternatively, you could go further north and circumnavigate the Three Sisters. That is a well known route with good trails and many diversions along the way.
A friend of mine did this a few decades ago. What i recall hearing about as the biggest challenge was the few creeks that have carved out steep sided gullies, several hundred feet deep, with loose scree as pretty much the entire slope. Crossing those was a bear. You either go very high and get into mountaineering, go very low and walk a lot of forest, or have a hairy scramble down into and back up out of each. But he did enjoy the trip. Quite a lot of elevation gain and loss. I think it gave him a real sense of just how big that mountain is.
In his post yesterday (March 24), I took note of Paul's warning concerning the challenge of the creeks on a Mt Shasta Circumnavigation. It can not be overemphasized. Immediately, I recalled going up to the Summit a couple of times from the Clear Creak TH. On that route, early on (as the forest starts to thin), one peers through the trees to see the stunning and massive Mud Creek Canyon to the hiker's left. In the Mt Shasta Book (see my March 20 post), Selters and Zanger propose crossing Mud Creek a couple of hundred yards above the Falls. To facilitate this crucial crossing, they provide instructions how to descend and exit the Canyon.
When reviewing some of my Mt Shasta records this morning, I came across a map that belongs to the Mt Shasta Book. I noticed that, in fact, on the map SELTERS AND ZANGER HAVE INDICATED THEIR PROPOSED CIRCUMNAVIGATION ROUTE (along with hiking trails, climbing routes, skiing routes, and climbing & skiing routes). After studying it some, I refolded the map and returned it to its home in a pocket inside the back cover of the book.
