Look Who it Was Random video

That incredible feeling when you summit Mt. Shasta!!!

887 views · Published 18 June 2014 · 1:06 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Alexa Weber Morales · 2014 · Sports

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We climbed to the top of Mt. Shasta in Northern California, 14,179 feet, from our base camp at Helen Lake (10,600 feet), which we climbed to the previous day. Truly the hardest thing I have ever done.

"The unforgettable experience of climbing Mt. Shasta when you have no idea what you’re in for"

Sunday, June 14, 2014 – 2:00 AM

 

The image returns to me again and again like a talisman. I don’t want to mete out this story in terms of training plans, fancy gear and climbing logistics. I want to conjure it as if I was still tottering in the thin air at 14,179 feet.

 

I am woken, if in fact I was ever sleeping, by low voices and the sounds of tents unzipping. Since moving makes me gulp air like a fish flopping on shore, I lie still on my back and listen to the growing chorus. The ranger was right: Once a few climbers woke up, we’d all wake up. But for the past seven hours, my brain has been painfully pulsating thanks to our base camp altitude of 10,600 feet. Even though it was unusually calm and I was toasty in our tent nestled in a half cave in the snow, I spent the night turning the thought of quitting over and over in my aching head like a polished stone.

 

After half an hour, someone calls my name from a nearby tent. My 13-year-old son is fast asleep. I had oriented myself in the opposite direction at some point in the night, wondering if I got my head above my feet the pounding would stop. I wiggle awkwardly back around, unzip the door and look out. I’m not prepared for what I see.

 

Mount Shasta’s snowy flanks glow by an enormous moon hung high. Avalanche Gulch rises, then disappears into jagged black sky edge. There is no wind. Tiny bluish lights are scattered like fireflies on the mountain.

 

“Oh my God, it’s so beautiful!” I gasp, realizing the lights are climbers making their ant-like ascent up the sleeping volcano. I wake up my son and the wondrous look on his face when he pokes his body out of the tent and sees the procession of headlamps is priceless. This view is the antidote, erasing all the exhaustion from yesterday’s climb with heavy packs to this snow camp. We both feel tremendously motivated.

 

My headache is gone. I take two Advil anyway, then fuss around until I find my human waste bag. There were a lot of jokes when we got them the previous afternoon from the ranger station. It comes with a paper target with numbered rings. “So you can say ‘I scored 10 points!’” my son had laughed.

Read the rest of the story here: 
http://www.alexawebermorales.com/climbing-mt-shasta/

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