Shasta - Avy Gulch '21 - horrendous conditions

Check out this prime conditions!!! Icy Sharkfins 

Angel Wings = no go

Misery Hill = Glacier Ice

Hotlum side wasn't that great either...

Let's check out the Trinity Chutes... 

Made it back in town to meet up with the Galicias at Emigrant Lake.

Strava - https://www.strava.com/activities/5138643139

Shasta #26 - the summit skunk

2020... what a crazy year.  Not my best in recent memory... BUT I did manage to get up Shasta.  And visit the Stinky Summit Shasta Skunk.  Woke up at 4 am, started up at 5:30 am, summitted, skied down Hotlum for a few 1000ft, re-summitted and skied down the Trinity Chutes.  These were my first go on my new skimo set up.  I got new boots on geartrade for 150$, picked up the skis and binders from Metres, and got the techcrampon 250, which rocks. 

Quite a number of folks up on the mtn.  

Who would forget their gloves???

Yeah Pat!

Purr-fect corn

I need to redo my boots... 

Carb back up to fuel my drive home.  

Soloing McLoughlin & Brown

Looking down the N. Face of McLoughlin... so tasty looking... but not on this day.  

Another view from the top.  You can see Brown to the right side of the pic.

And the summit shot from the top of Brown looking over at McLoughlin.  Brown was short and fun. Not much steeps.

Had a fun solo adventure exploring some near by peaks.  McLoughlin is a bit over an hour away and provides decent access to some fun terrain.  It's a bit of a slog, making it more of an all day affair.  And the goods are on the N. Side, which makes it even a bigger day.  On this day though, we hadn't had much weather so the snow wasn't ideal.  But I was itching to get out, so I figured I'd just go.

Got up McLoughlin a bit quicker than expected, so I decided to go back down, cross the road and tag Brown as well.  Gotta get back there with decent snow.

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A tad bit too windy for 🌽 at the top of McLoughlin, so went and toured over to Brown to explore. Lots of potential, can’t wait to get back here.

A post shared by Yu Kuwabara (@snowymonk) on Feb 26, 2020 at 8:10pm PST

First Successful Winter Ascent of Shasta (Dec 16 2019)

Finally got my "winter" Shasta ascent.  Dreaming of a 6k+ ft powder lap... but not yet... does it ever snow up there w/o wind?  Start off with some panos...

this shows my descent conditions quite well...

4 am departure...

and 5:45 am start

cool shot of black butte down below... an island in the sea of fog.

Now I know... but I had placed 2 insoles in this boot as I thought I could take up a bit of space.  But this caused some major foot pain during this ascent... 

Shastina and Chicken Heads.  Angels Wings in the shade

The snow was actually descent down low.  Harvesting turns down here would have been the skier thing to do.  But the alpinist in me wanted crappy turns I guess..

after a quick recovery meal, I was home before the kids got home.