Travis sitting on the ridge line of Greenbutte in contemplative thought over the ascent.
It may appear as though we really made an attempt at the summit, but we didn't:) I know this seems deceptive but we just didn't have time to make a summit attempt. For the past week or so we have been checking avalanche reports and picking anyone's brain we could find to see when our window of opportunity to summit Shasta would be. The window did not look promising to be this weekend because a storm was scheduled to reach us that afternoon or the evening. So instead of a fullblown attempt, we rented snowshoes, (probably one of the best 9 bucks I ever spent) , and went out to nail our route down and test out our compass skills. We took off from the Bunny Flat parking lot at approximately 1:00 and turned back down the mountain at 4:00. We made it deceptively high, a towering 9,500 Ft, but that is where the deceptive part comes in, the parking lot is 6,860 Ft high, so we only had about 3,000 vertical feet covered, the mountain is 14,162, you do the math. We took our time getting there, explored the route as much as possible, found land marks to bounce coordinates off of to make sure we could do all this in the dark. See, when you do a summit attempt like this, you want to start as early as possible to avoid any afternoon climate changes that may bring in a sudden storm. We plan on starting at around midnight or so, that means the first 6 hours will probably be in the dark, but it makes for a gorgeous sunrise:)
All in all, the day exploring the mountain was unbelievable. It was my first time on snowshoes, a long overdue activity if I do say so myself, but much worth the anticipation. Snowshoes are like a lot of things in life, the more you think about it, the more you stumble and fall. Even though they look like they would totally mess up your step, you are supposed to just pretend that you are walking normal as with shoes on, when this is done you practically forget they are on. At first, you concentrate down all the time to make sure you are not stepping all over yourself and at the same time making sure your poles are in sync with the proper leg. So all this time you are looking down, focusing on every step you take not knowing what is going on around you. Then you realize, "what am I doing, I am missing all the beauty", you look up and begin to experience the trip and really launch into the journey and what do you know all of a sudden your steps become even easier. When we constantly look down to make sure we are always stepping right, we are inhibited from experiencing and growing through our experiences. We are stuck just getting through them and all that was gained was a good look at the ground upon which we were treading. That is why today we have so many insecure people out there. When you are a child, your family becomes your foundation and when that foundation is always moving and very unstable, the child is forced to look down in order to avoid falling. So instead of being able to look out and experience all that is out there and grow from it knowing that he has security beneath him, his whole focus becomes "do not fall because their may be no one to pick you up." In summary, unstable foundation=insecurity. So go out and look up for a day, see if your life makes a little better sense afterwards, don't get stuck looking at your feet, you may miss the beauty God has for you!
