Shasta is an impressive mountain, towering over the town whenever it pokes out of the clouds. From town, you can see the route up Avalanche Gulch all the way to the ridgeline.

Brian and I had a midday start and the road up to the Bunny Flat trailhead is about 20 minutes from town and paved the whole way. We were each carrying about 55-pound packs on the slog up to the Helen Lake campsite. It’s about 3 miles and 3,500 feet up to Helen Lake from the trailhead. There’s a nice hut about halfway with fresh water. We ended up using snowshoes as the snow softened in the afternoon sun. We met our fellow campers, melted snow for dinner, and went to bed at sundown.

We started the next day around 4 a.m. out of camp and made quick work of the first 1,000 feet. The climb up toward Red Banks starts getting pretty steep near the top. The snow was pretty firm, and we were kicking some steps in towards the top. I think the darkness was playing tricks on our eyes because the last hundred feet to Red Banks seemed to drag on forever.

It was a little shortcut, the less steep and more standard option is to the right of the Red Banks rock formations. It was pretty chilly early in the morning, but the sky was clear and the wind was super manageable. Beautiful morning. 

After a short break, we pushed up and over Misery Hill, which honestly wasn’t too bad. By this point the sun was out, and we could finally see the summit block. At this point you only have about 300 feet of vertical left to the summit.

Our descent back to camp went quickly, although I’ve never wanted skis more than while descending from Red Banks and during the long slog from camp to the car in the soft snow. It’s definitely very skiable, with an option for some chill low profile stuff or some steeper chutes. 

The summit from Helen Lake camp is about 3,700 feet over 2 miles (pretty steep). Camp to summit, back to breakdown camp, and then camp back out to the parking lot took us about 11.5 hours. 

We were so stoked we were able to get on a mountain after the weather shut us down in Alaska. We crashed in the town of Mount Shasta for the night, then made the drive down towards Mount Whitney for our next climb of the week.