Fourteen of us (Fred, Eric, Jeandrew, Joe, Brett, Kyle, Debrah, Jernej, Stephen, Sean, Abhishek, Hareem, Bill, and myself) drove to the Northgate trailhead. We got off I-5 at Weed, then drove about 10 miles on 47 and took an exit on Military Pass road. Starting this exit we were lost in a maze of dirt road for about three hours before we found the trailhead. We camped and went to sleep immediately. On Sunday, we woke up early in the morning and left not too early in the morning. Heavy packs made walking slow. There was some thrill to experience on the way. The first patch of snow we had to climb had steep pitch at the top. If not for Jeandrew's excellent step kicking skills with her rigid boots, I would have had to use crampons. We traversed some ridges and ate lunch - lunch bar for me. Then I put on my crampons and followed a steep incline (following Sean) while rest took a gentler route that did not require crampons. We arrived at our campsite sometime in the mid-afternoon. Everyone started shovelling snow to make a secure base for the tents and to melt snow and eat. A few went on reconnaissance trip. I ate my dinner bar and went to bed.
We woke up around one on Sunday, put on our harness, ate breakfast - a breakfast bar for me, and were off by two. Two of us bailed out. There were now four rope teams with three persons each. It took about half an hour of boulder hopping to get to the glacier. We put on our crampons, roped up, and off we went up the glacier. We were going up the glacier with our headlamps and were worried a little that we might not see some baby crevasses on the way. After a while we got to the bergchrund which we traversed on two snow bridges. If there were no snow bridges, we would probably have to turn back. Going was slow. It got cold and windy as we gained elevation. Turns out everyone gets tired periodically so there was no need to ask for rest breaks. The route was steep so it was hard to take a good break even if we stopped - feet were always in funny angle. I ate my snack bar during one of these breaks. Around nine in the morning, we finally reached the top of the glacier. We left our ropes there and walked for about 10 minutes to get to the top. There were already a few people starting to arrive from other routes. I ate my third breakfast bar and enjoyed a slice of dried mango (thanks to Stephen). We then headed down to the top of the glacier. We roped up and began our long journey to the bottom of the glacier. Only on our way down that we realized how steep the glacier is. Very steep. My rope team took a little detour to retrieve the water bottle that a different rope team had dropped on our way up. We had to go across a crevasse field for the retrieval operation. Once we walked past the bergchrund, we decided to have a little fun. We drove the pickets into the snow, Fred looped the rope around his axe which was planted in the snow, Jeandrew belayed me while I crawled to the lip of the crevasse. Wow, the crevasse looked bottomless. I could see some ice formations deep down - must be at least 100 ft down. Fred was second to go see the crevass. After we had our fun, we slowly walked down the glacier. Once we approved the icefall area, our rope team and the team that was behind us was debating whether or not we should go to the icefall. Suddenly we heard a huge explosive sound - must have been some serac falling in the icefall. We decided to go to the icefall anyway. We had to jump across many cracks and blocks of ice and after about an hour we emerged at the other end of the icefall. Our campsite was about 15 minutes from the end of the icefall.
We packed our tents and ropes and rest of the gear and we started walking. It took a long afternoon and some part of the evening to get back to the trailhead. Because it was 8 and it did not make sense to start driving back, my car decided to get lost on our way out. Turns out the map got us lost again!
Mac, Debrah, Hareem and I hiked up Mt. Baldy as our conditioning hike for Mt. Shasta expedition next week. We went up the ski hut route. It took about two hours and 15 minutes including breaks to get to the top from Mankar flat. It took about two hours to come down because I was walking slow to preserve my knees.
Maheshwor, Sumit, and I drove on highway 38. We turned left on Jenks Lake Road East. We drove for couple miles and parked on the side of the road. It was not too cold so we left some layers in the car. We headed south towards a mountain which had a snow covered slope. We slogged up the slope, took a quick break then we descended to a stream. The southern face of the hill was totally dry. After crossing the creek, we climbed up another snow covered face. The face was steep so Maheshwor was sliding a lot because he did not have the best boots. After taking a break on the ridge, we turned east a bit, then "glissade" down the face almost all the way to the creek. After crossing the creek, we go up another ridge, glissade down again, go up the ridge and run down the snowy slope. Maheshwor was totally wet after these two hours of walking but he claimed he had too much fun in this trip.