Really big trees and windy mountains

The past three days have been so amazing!!! We drove from Portland to Jedediah State Park in northern California and pitched our tent. We still had some daylight left so we did a short one mile loop hike. The trees are HUGE!!! Pictures do not do these giant conifers justice. That night we fell asleep listening to some heavy rainfall. In the morning we were planning to do a mellow 5.2 mile hike to The Boy Scout Tree.

The Boy Scout Tree trail is approached by a very scenic dirt road that weaves in and out of some massive redwoods. It was an adventure avoiding the potholes filled with water, trying not to get stuck, and at the same time checking that the bikes on my roof weren't hitting any of the tree branches. Luckily Elliot made it there unscathed--only one minor scrape on the bottom. The hike was fairly flat and very mellow with minimal crowds. At the end of the trail we saw a short waterfall and finally, The Boy Scout Tree. This tree was by far the biggest one we had seen. Unfortunately, somebody had nailed a sign into the tree to label that it was indeed the Boy Scout Tree. It erks me when we can feel so remote sometimes only to be dwarfed by human impact.

After our hike we began driving over to Mt. Shasta. It took us roughly 4.5 hours to get there but the drive was fantastic. We took the scenic Redwood Highway and then the famous coastal highway 101.  We stopped to walk along the beach on a gorgeous, sunny California day.

That night we camped at the trail head to the Avalanche Gulch approach of Shasta. The weather that evening was miserable! Very cold and wet. Luckily, the forecast was showing sunshine for our climbing day. We had intended to only do a single day of touring (aka skiing) on Shasta and we weren't planning on reaching the 14,179 foot summit. Mike met a fellow skiier at the trail head, Mark, who was on a road trip and was planning on touring alone so he joined up with us.

We left the parking lot at 6:15am and made quick work of the first 2,000 feet, reaching 9,000 feet by 8:30 am. Our goal was to get to Helen Lake at 10,400 feet, but the wind was relentless up to that point. We were getting knocked over by the gusts. Mike and I kept our skiis on for a while and Mark gave up on skiis and began booting up the steep slope. After Mike took a slide, we switched over to just boots also. We made it up another few hundred feet and decided to take shelter on a ridge behind a few rocks.

We sat in our wind protected spot for roughly one hour, waiting for the wind to die down and for the sun to warm up the snow. Eventually, we decided to start our descent, despite the icy and slippery skiing conditions. There were some small patches of good powder from the snowfall the previous night but it was mostly windswept and left the underlying icy layer. On the bright side, we were able to ski all the way to the parking lot without any major injuries! All in all, it was a really fun adventure. I'm glad we were able to get our skiis out one last time before heading to the desert.

We're currently on our way to Bakersfield, CA where we'll meet up with Mike's dad. There we'll be doing some final preparations for the PCT hike and getting ready for our canyoneering adventures next week in Zion.