Mount Shasta fall leaves 1 dead, 4 hurt
A day of climbing on Mount Shasta ended Monday with one mountain guide dead and four climbers airlifted off the mountain, two of whom were seriously injured.
“It was just a perfect storm of bad conditions, people on the mountain and inexperience,” said Nick Meyers, lead climbing ranger on Mount Shasta for the U.S. Forest Service.
A cold, late-season storm over the weekend doused Shasta’s lower flanks in about ¾ inch of rain and brought snow, fog and freezing temperatures to the upper mountain — right near the altitude threshold where climbing parties stage for their summit attempts.
The storm left the mountain “plastered” in rime ice and socked in the summit with fog, Meyers said. If a climber were to slip on Shasta’s steeps, “even a total pro would have a tough time stopping or self-arresting with conditions like that,” he said.
But conditions had cleared up by Monday, and several guided groups and a handful of private climbing parties geared up for summit pushes, Meyers said.
A guided group of three climbers, who were roped together and ascending the popular Avalanche Gulch route on the mountain’s south side Monday morning, slipped and tumbled about 2,500 vertical feet down the mountain.
The guide, identified as Jillian Elizabeth Webster, 32, of Redmond, Ore., by the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, died in the fall. One climber suffered a broken ankle; the other sustained “severe injuries (and) is in critical condition,” according to the Sheriff’s Office. The survivors were airlifted to a nearby hospital.
In a separate incident midday, another party of three climbers in Avalanche Gulch slipped and fell roughly 1,000 down the icy gulch. They sustained various injuries and were found separately by first responders. Two were airlifted off the mountain. Meyers, who assisted in the rescues, noted that they weren’t properly equipped for the mountain — lacking the requisite helmets and wearing microspikes on their feet instead of more appropriate crampons.
Yet another climber in Avalanche Gulch was being rescued Tuesday morning, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
A 14,179-foot volcano, Shasta towers above Siskiyou County in California’s far north and is a popular mountaineering objective this time of year, before summer warmth melts away its snow cover. About 6,000 climbers attempt the summit each season.
But dangers loom on Shasta, and there are about a dozen search and rescues and one fatality per year, according to the Forest Service. The most common emergencies involve slip and falls, and uncontrolled slides on steep ice, rockfall, and climbers getting lost.
“This is a bit of an anomaly to have this many rescues in one day,” Meyers said. “Overall, this year, we’d been well below normal for rescues.”
The Sheriff’s Office is asking climbers to pause their ascents for the next two to three days and check with the Forest Service about conditions on the mountain.