Shaver Family Photos

The Y's Hikers

My brother and I started hiking when we were teens in the Lancaster /Palmdale/ Quart Hill area of  California.  The group we hiked with was the Y's Hikers, a YMCA sponsored hiking group.  We went on a nine day hike each year in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California,and many shorter hikes during the year.  I have been able to contact some of our old hiking friends, like the Lowrys, and Wendy (Teuscher) Schaefer, but others are not so easy to find. This post is up so that if some of them google on their name or image, they might run across an old photo of themselves or their old hiking buddies, and drop me a line.  Between Byron, Conrad, and Mark Lowry, Mike Shaver, Wendy, and myself we have put together trip reports and photo collections of some of our old trips.

Jim Lawrence, James Lawrence.

Mike Powell, Michael Powell

Dean Ranger

John Laine and Tom Curry

Rob Culbertson, Dean Ranger, Bill Morse

Kevin Anderson

Bob Shaver, John Laine, Kevin Anderson

The Ptarmigan Traverse

In 1973 my college buddy Marc Dilley and I went on a famous mountaineering trip in the North Cascades of Washington, near the Canadian border. It is called the Ptarmigan Traverse. It starts at Cascade Pass, which is reached by one of the most spectacular hikes imaginable, spectacular because you are surrounded by incredible peaks on either side. More photos are in the Ptarmigan Traverse photo album.

From Cascade Pass, you leave the trail, not to see another trail for 5 or 7 days, depending on how fast you do the route. Most of the pics below are by Marc.

The view below is by Marc, and shows me in stylin' red socks, wool knickers, and ventile cotton anorak, standard mountaineer garb of the 70's, when wool was king and synthetic fabric was only a dream. We were camped with a view of El Dorado Peak, about halfway to the second pass of the trip, Cache Col.

Looking down at where the trip started we could see Cascade Pass and Forbidden Peak, and Sahale Arm, which leads to Sahale Pk off to the right of the picture below.

Our second night on the trip was spent at a small lake named Kool Aid Lake. There is usually no lake to be seen here, as its usually frozen and covered by snow. In the evening at Kool Aid Lake a cloud formed over us and swirled about in the golden evening sun. It had a real magical air about it.   

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The photo below is of me looking down at the valley floor from Kool Aid Lake.  I was trying a hair style called the "mountain man".  The route of the Ptarmigan is on the mountains above those big U shaped glacial valleys. The valley bottoms are impassible, with devils club and alder thickets, and no trails.  The valley walls are very steep, and level out on their upper part to a flatter profile, which is covered by snow and glaciers.  The glaciers have carved away the mountains until all that is left is a knife edge ridge between the glaciers on either side of the ridge.  The route of the Ptarmigan follows these upper areas high above the valley floor, and crosses the glaciers and the passes between the glaciers and ridges.

 

On the third day of the trip, you have to cross a rocky ridge near Mt. Formidible, and also this snow filled gulley. This is called "the red band", for the band of red rock that leads up to the snow gulley. I crossed first in this photo from my third Ptarmigan, cutting steps in the hard snow. Then I belayed my partner across. The run out below the snow crossing is not pretty, so your heart is pumping pretty good as you move your ice axe with each step, and concentrate on not tripping on your own crampons. Carrying a 70+ pound pack does not make things easier either.

The photo below shows the group after leaving Yang Yang Lakes, climbing a ridge, and approaching the main obstacle of the fourth day. The route is to head toward the dark rock wall, descend to the left towards the big scary glacier, then pick your way through the crevasse fields of that big mother glacier, and top out on a pass next to the pointy peak at the right of the picture. The crevasses were so incredibly deep, maybe 200 feet deep. Crossing the snow bridges was a little disconcerting.

The view below shows the glacier more clearly, and our route up the right side of the glacier, through the crevasses and up the slope.  The visible crevasses are easy, its the hidden crevasses that are dangerous.

Mark Gibson descending a steep snow slope with a big pack. The danger was in sliding down the snow and sliding right over the little rock ledge, below which were cliffs.

We camped on an flat spot below Le Conte Pk, and in the evening thought we would head up and see if we could climb it.  We took ice axes, but no rope.  It got pretty steep at the top, but we reached the top, looked around, and then looked down at our route.  We all thought "Oh Crap, that is a lot steeper than I want to downclimb!".  It was dang steep.  The fellow in the photo is standing about vertical, and you can see that the snow slope is right in his face.  It had to be 60 degrees, which is the steepest snow can stick to rock.  Plus if you got sliding you would be down in those rocks long before you could self arrest.  Do not ever climb Le Conte Pk without a rope or a helicopter, thats what I learned.

The view fromWhite Rock Lakes to Dome Peak (below) is pretty impressive, and its made more impressive by periodic calving of house sized chunks of ice that break off the glacier and fall over the cliffs below, forming a temporary white flow of ice pieces over the rock. That goes on all day and all night. 

The last pass of the trip is on the ridge between Dome Peak and Spire Point, and is called Spire Pass.  We climbed Spire Point, then rested at Spire Pass (below) before heading down to Cub Lake.  The slopes below Spire Pass on the southern side were so steep and slippery with grass and moss that we thought about putting our crampons on for the descent. Of course there was no trail

The photo below shows me in white and another guy approaching the top of Dome Peak, which has really breathtaking dropoffs on either side.  It is definitely not a "dome". It was tempting to get down on hands and knees and crawl out there, when you realized on either side was just about vertical for a long ways

The photo below is as we were rappelling down from Spire Point.  Spire Point is so sharp there is no place to sit on the summit, even for one person.  Each person gets to a ledge below the summit, pulls up to the knife edge ridge that is the summit, looks around at the view over your knuckles, maybe peeps down the other side, which is vertical, and drops back down to the ledge below.  From the ledge we rappelled down. Its about a 5.5 climb, which is enough for me when the exposure is like that. A rock was kicked down from above that came down the route like a cannon ball.  It didn't hit anyone, or they'd be dead.

Mt. Shasta, 2004

Jim and Mary Cook and I went to northern California in August to climb Mt. Shasta , a volcanic peak with an elevation of 14116 feet.  Photos are at Shasta.

The first night we camped in the woods at our car, and the next morning got started on the trail at Bunny Flat at 8:10 AM.  We hiked a nice trail to the cabin at Horse Camp, which we thought was an easy 1000 feet of elevation gain.  From there we hiked up a trail made of large rocks, which ended up in a scree filled trail, and we thought it was a hard 1000 feet of elevation gain to a bench where we rested. The next 1000 feet was cross country over loose rocks, to Helen Lake, 10,400 feet in elevation, where we arrived about 1:30 PM.  We tried to nap and rest for the hard day to come.

We started from Helen lake at 4:10 AM, and by 5:30 AM we had gained about 1000' and were at the bottom of an outcropping of rock called the Heart. By then it was starting to get light as dawn approached.  We were in the shadow of the mountain, so even after dawn we were in the shade for a long time.

By 7:30 we had gained another 1000', and were at the top of the snow field, and directly below some bands of red rock that had to be scaled. The route up was through a narrow gulley in the red rock, on a narrow band of snow that had been hardened to ice by thawing and freezing.  By 9:00 we had climbed about another 1000'  and were through the red bands of rock and came out on a plateau, at the bottom of Misery Hill, at 13,200'.  From there a dusty trail resumed. We rested a bit, ate some, and headed on.  I felt pretty good at this point, and pretty energetic.  I think climbing Mt. Borah two weeks previous to this trip was a great warm up to this climb.

We went up the trail up Misery Hill, along a ridge, and across a large flat ice filled plateau.  Across the plateau, we were at the summit spire, which was another 150' or so of gain.  At 10:30 AM we were on the peak, at 14,161. Its supposed to be 3 hours to the red rock band, 3 more hours to the top, so we were right on schedule.

We didn't stay long, as clouds were building.  By 11:10 AM we were down to bottom of Misery Hill, and by 11:45, we were at a notch that allowed us to pass through the red bands of rock.  Going down some rocky areas was slow, and tricky, and then we were on the snow fields again.  I glissaded the whole way down, starting about 12:30.  There were chutes that had been carved into the snow by previous climbers, and they were as wide a a person's butt, and sometimes 2 or 3 feet deep.  They were steep in places, did some great curves and bends, and you could get out of control.  I was in camp by 1:00 PM  at Helen Lake.  We had placed a large plastic garbage bag on the ground, with snow in it, and the solar heat had provided us with a nice supply of water during the day.

By 2:00 we had packed up and started hiking out from Lk Helen.  It was about 2000 vertical feet to horse camp, which took us a few hours, and it was starting to sprinkle.

At 3:30 we left Horse camp for the trailhead, in a light rain, and were at the car by 4:30.  During the trip we used my Dragonfly stove, and used 1.5 small bottles of fuel, about 3 hours of burning to melt snow.  That was pretty impressive.

Mt. Borah, 7-2004

I just limped in from climbing Mt. Borah, at 12,662' the highest peak in Idaho. The photos are at Mt. Borah.  It was 4.5 miles in distance from the car, with about 5600' of elevation gain. Quite a bit of it is on a rough trail, but some was scrambling over a ridge that was exposed on both sides. That ridge is called chickenout ridge, for good reason. After the ridge, you have to downclimb about 20 feet of steep rock to a 30 feet long horizontal snow ridge, with steep dropoffs down snow fields on both sides. I was going pretty steady to 12,000' then really slowed down. I was taking rests every 20 feet or so. On the way down, my knees were really tired, and I really used my hiking poles for stepping down from rock to rock.

The snow ridge was no big deal. I carried an ice axe, and didn't even use it. The top of the ridge had fairly deep footprints and snow was not icy, so you just walked across. If you started sliding down the snow slopes, it would not be pretty, but just don't get started.

I really liked my hiking poles, and this was the first time I have ever used them. I took 3 liters of water, drank liberally all day, and was out of water about an hour from the car on the way down.

It got hot, and if the weather goes bad, it could get very cold very quickly, so dress accordingly.

When you reach chickenout ridge, the trail basically dead ends at a rock wall. YOu think, "what the ...? Where did the trail go?" I was tempted to angle to the right at that point, and found that was not the way. I had to climb straight up a steep headwall. (of course in that situation you can't just go back, as that would confirm that you had made a routefinding mistake)

Instead, at the first cliff, go straight up it, then weave in and out on the ridge that follows. It is a bit exposed, but the rock is solid, the handholds plentiful, and just keep 3 points of contact at all times. Its scary enough that you are fully concentrating, and not likely to make slips ups.

When the way is blocked by insurrmountable rocks, go around them to the left. That happens twice. When you get to the last little cliff before the snow ridge, you just have to downclimb it. Its steep, but has good handholds if you go slow and find them. One guy was there with his kids, and he belayed them down. I would with my kids too.

Other than the ridge, its a rough trail. It is punishing and exhausting though. It was 4 hours up and 4.5 hours down for me. You need to leave the cars by 6am or 7am at the latest.