Mt. Eddy

After a few days of deliberating of whether to try for Mt. Shasta or not, my friends and I decided to Hike Mt. Eddy, and hike it at sunrise. With only one day of prep, and very little mountaineering experience between the eight of us, and no gear for dealing with the elements we would encounter above 10,000ft, it seemed like an adventurous, yet poor idea. Mt. Eddy would do, and it did indeed serve as an excellent day trip.

We began our adventure at 3:30am, it took longer than expected to get on the road, but soon we were off under a brilliant moon driving towards the trailhead. The main trail actually coincides with the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) as it is running north from the Castel Crags towards Marble Mountain Wilderness. The PCT is a wonderful trail, which was designated as a national scenic trail in 1968. It runs from the southern border of the United States over 2,600miles to the Canadian border. The trail loosely fallows the crests and ridgelines of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges along the pacific coast. Unfortunately this means that the junction is roughly 30miles from Mt. Shasta or 40miles from Enta. Despite the long windy drive and late start we still began our hike in relative darkness.

The wide logging road on which we started out on soon dwindled down and came to an abrupt end confirming our fears that we had taken a wrong turn very early on. Our eagerness to see the sun rise played into our poor decision making which was compounded by the darkness and lack of preplanning. But that didn’t change much. Having set out with the goal of seeing the sunrise, we rock hopped and ridge scrambled for 80min until we could see the sun just peaking over the northern shoulder of Mt. Shasta.

Breakfast at 8,000ft is wonderful no matter what you are eating.

From there on it truly was hiking on the edge as we blazed a new trail over some of the roughest terrain out their until we summit ted 6 hours and over 6 and a half miles after having begun. We were exhausted and enjoyed a well-earned nap.

courtesy of Steven Anderson

The return trip was much easier being that we now knew where the trail was. We even stopped to enjoy the largest of the three deadfall lakes on the way down.

Steven Anderson

 Over all it was an incredible day covering over  half a marathon of mountain tops.