When Josiah Whitney climbed Shasta with William Brewer in 1862, they left at two a.m. after a moonlit breakfast. At Horse Camp, well before first light, we hid our large backpacks in the forest. We strapped on small daypacks that carried food, emergency weather gear and snow equipment. The first few steps seemed so easy, a gentle climb over brown rocks, which looked like much of the pumice that covers Shasta from its last eruption 300 years ago. The small porous rocks formed from lava that blew right out of the top like puffed wheat.
Any direction going up is the right direction.
The last trees disappeared at 8,500 feet, and as we entered the alpine area, only a few tiny flowers were sprinkled among the rocks, wherever they could find a toehold. This late in summer, the first snow was at 8,600 feet. A little patch of it sat at the bottom of a gully, fingers of it tracing up the mountainside. Already, the world below seemed to be opening up at our feet. Looking south, we could view the entire Sacramento River canyon, topped by Castle Crags, a series of granite spires near Dunsmuir.