Here's Tina's acount of our 27 hour run around northern California.
THREE PEAKS - MISSED BY (less than) A MILE
GOAL: Three Peaks - Mt. Shasta (14,162'), Black Butte (6,325'), and Mt. Eddy (9,025') - climbed consecutively, connecting each peak by running the trails & roads between them; anticipated to be done within a 24-hour period.
DISTANCE: Roughly 50 miles, as measured by GPS.
TOTAL ASCENT: 18,000 feet (approximately).
TIME: 27 hours.
PARTICIPANTS: Tina Ure, 47, of Mount Shasta
Daniel Probst, 28, of Bellingham WA
WHY:
- Don't ask - ultrarunners are simply crazy.
- Training for Western States 100-Mile race later in June.
- The inspiration was Laurie Bagley's summit of Mt. Everest last year, May 25, 2006. After reading in the paper of her amazing accomplishment, I was stretching my imagination just trying to visualize a 29,000-foot mountain. I looked around at our "little" mountains, and mentally added up the heights of the 3 peaks we see from town - Shasta, Black Butte, and Mt. Eddy - and realized that altogether they total just over 29,000! Then it occurred to me that they might be able to be climbed consecutively, connecting them via trails and dirt & gravel roads (and just a bit of pavement). So I've been thinking of this adventure for just over a year.
THE RESULT: Successful summits of Mt. Shasta (5-3/4 hrs to top) and Black Butte (65 mins from the trailhead to top - after 2-1/2 hrs running there from Bunny Flat); Close but not quite (within 0.8 mile) to the Mt. Eddy summit, at the 8000-foot saddle; headed down at that point for safety reasons, returning to a car shuttle at the Parks Creek trailhead.
THE EVENT: We started the Mt. Shasta climb at 0330 with Darin Quigley and his coworker Dennis, and had an uneventful and fun climb under perfect conditions. It was Daniel's first mountain ascent, and he caught on quickly to crampons and steep pitches. The altitude might have affected him a little, but he didn't complain - knowing that he’d better get used to it as he’s running the Hardrock 100-miler in Colorado in a few months, which averages 11,000' elevation! Because we made it to the summit at 0915, we had to spend some time there to allow the snow to soften enough to be able to slide most of the descent. We enjoyed the sunshine and chatting with other people who had summitted. Returning to the car at Bunny Flat we had snack food for lunch and changed into running gear, leaving at 3:30 p.m. Darin accompanied us running the trails and dirt roads (and really kept our pace moving fast!) to the Black Butte trailhead, where we'd stashed an ice chest with cool drinks. We mostly hiked the uphill, but jogged some of the smoother sections. My daughter happened to call me on my cell phone while we were on the west-facing section of the trail, and I told her to get the binoculars and try to spot us on the trail, as we were in direct view of my house! We topped Black Butte at around 7:00 p.m., and enjoyed the impressive view of Mt. Shasta, but tried to avoid looking at how far to the west Mt. Eddy lies. We made good time running the downhill trail and flat gravel roads (plus 2 miles of pavement) to my house, where my husband had dinner waiting. We took just over an hour break to eat and change into warmer clothes & headlights for the night section, and set off through my neighborhood and onto the railroad tracks. There is where we first started having trouble - I failed to find the shortcut that connects the tracks with Rainbow Ridge, a trail I hadn't run in a few years. It's ironic that while I'd spent a lot of time in preceding weeks marking (with flags and GPS waypoints) out-of-the-way places that I imagined would be difficult to find in the snow or in the dark - such as the Horse Camp trail crossover to McBride Springs dirt road, and the Sisson-Callahan Trail where even the hiking guide books describe it as "disappearing in a meadow for about 1/4 mile" - I hadn't thought to explore the area within a mile radius of my house! Anyway, in the dark we took a wrong turn at a fork in the trail which sent us into a large swampy meadow surrounded by Wagon Creek and its tributaries. We made a huge circle within the meadow trying to find a crossing or even a direct way back to the railroad tracks, which would take us close to the Davis Place area where Rainbow Ridge Trail starts. After more than an hour wasted and getting wet mucky shoes, we retraced our steps and ran out to Old Stage Rd., reluctantly running the couple extra miles of pavement. Thus we started Rainbow Ridge at midnight, feeling very frustrated, cold, and tired. Added to that was the depressingly steep grade (maximum of 33%), and the fact that immediately after the ridge summit you lose nearly all that hard-earned elevation over the next set of rollercoaster hills that lie in the valley between Rainbow and the Wagon Creek Falls forest service roads. It was an emotional low point, but we later found out that it can (and did) get worse. Gradually climbing again, we didn’t miss the shortcut climb up through Morgan Meadow, and a mile later successfully found access to the Sisson-Callahan Trail. As expected, this disappears in the meadow about 2 miles later, but since I'd pre-scouted this and made waypoints to the trail's reappearance on the uphill side, we navigated it fairly well. It's a good trail again for a few miles until it crosses the N. Fork of the Sacramento River (merely a creek at that elevation), but shortly after that it becomes essentially an abandoned trail - eroded in many places by rain, snowmelt, flash floods, fallen trees, you name it. It became more of a struggle to find the trail each time it evaporated into brush and rocks, and we were getting cold as we were slowed to less than a walk while hunting for blazes on the trees by headlight. Daniel was contemplating how to build a fire from his halogen headlight and tissues in case we totally lost the trail. It got somewhat better as we climbed the switchbacks, but then approaching the saddle at 8000 feet we started to encounter snow drifts, frozen firm and slick - another form of obscuring the trail! This was unbearably disheartening, as we assumed that we'd encounter even more snow as the trail climbed the last 1000 feet of switchbacks to the summit. I felt that it would be too much of a struggle to stay on trail; not to mention staying on our feet on snow-covered steep slopes, as we hadn't brought any traction devices for our running shoes. We weren't really thinking very well at that point - both of us nearing exhaustion and hypothermia - or we might have realized that sunrise wasn't far away and it would be easier by daylight and with the snow softening a bit. I actually had no idea what time it was, only that whenever sitting still we were losing body heat by the moment; so waiting for the sun to come up didn't even occur to me. We paused only briefly at the saddle to take a photo of the signpost, then waved at the Eddy Summit as we passed behind it to pick our way down to the Deadfall Lakes through the snow. We quickly lost the trail completely. I remembered that it goes close to at least two of the lakes, but the upper ones were still surrounded by too much snow to find anything. Using my GPS we made our way toward the lower lake, and after sunrise Daniel stood on a rock and spotted the trail - hallelujah! We then were able to run the last 3 or 4 miles to the car at Parks Creek parking lot - only to find that the truck wouldn't start! We did actually laugh at this point, unable to believe this final curse upon our adventure... Daniel tried pushing the truck, but every direction seemed uphill, and I think I'd have been happy just to fall asleep on the seat. Luckily he was still thinking clearly enough to check the battery connections and bingo, it started! We finally were able to make it home - safe, even if not completely successful - from our quest for the Three Peaks.
POSTSCRIPT: Feeling I needed more closure on the event, after Daniel headed back on his motorcycle to Bellingham, I drove back to the Deadfall basin to finish off Mt. Eddy - prepared with my trail-finding dogs and small crampons for the presumed snow crossings. It was relatively easy to locate the trail by daylight, and to my amazement there was only one significant snow drift across the summit trail! I timed myself from the trail signpost where we’d stopped climbing to Eddy's top, and found that we'd missed the summit by a mere 22-minute jog for that 0.8 mile ascent. Ah, if we'd have only known that it was so straightforward, I'm sure we'd have summoned the energy to complete it. I guess that leaves something for next year....
PARTICIPANTS’ BACKGROUNDS: Tina Ure has been an ultrarunner since moving to the Mt. Shasta area in 2001, having run 27 ultramarathons - trail races ranging from 50K (31.5 miles) to 100 miles. Mother of two daughters, 8 and 10, she’s also run from the city of Mt. Shasta to the summit, “Town To The Top” in 2004, in just over 13 hrs. Currently she is training for the Western States Endurance Race, 100 miles from Squaw Valley to Auburn, CA, on June 23nd and 24th. (Contact her if interested in being part of the crew for that event, at seemommyrun@nctv.com)
Daniel Probst, formerly an endurance mountain biker, has been running ultras for 2 years, having completed several 50K and 100K events, and two100-mile trail races; and the Rock and Ice Ultramarathon covering over 200K of snow-covered terrain in the Northwest Territory of Canada - in temperatures as low as -32 degrees F! He is currently training for the Hardrock 100-mile race in the Colorado Rocky Mountains
