Its 2pm and the roundtrip for this ultra is 15 hours.. Oops. I’m a tad late. My intention was to climb as far as the snow-line. Yet here I am parked at Bunny Flat trailhead and there is already plenty of the blindingly-white, crunchy, hard stuff. Whoopee! I’m about to ascend Mount Shasta for the first time.
I remember reading that this giant megalith is technically a volcano, due to blow sometime in the next 400 years. Hmmm… Rock slides are frequent, bears are prevalent and I am soon to find out sasquatch beam their mighty thoughts into the minds of susceptible hikers.
Here I am: a bowl into this, lacing my lucky boots, shrouded in shorts, long-shirt waist-tied, water hanging from belt, food stuffed in pockets, and kneeling to finger mud beneath my eyes to combat the snow-blind.
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