Peter Russo and I had a great climb up the West Face of Mount Shasta in early May.
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Here's a quick rundown from Peter. "We got to Bunny Flat on Friday a little past midnight and camped below the road. Saturday morning 9am we snowshoed in to Hidden Valley via Horse Camp where we cooked a little water. Route finding past Horse Camp was tough and the snow was soft, so the approach took ~6hrs. Set up high camp in Hidden Valley around 4:00, and got to sleep ~7pm which was a little later than we'd planned.
We woke up ~2am Sunday, and started the climb ~3am. It was a good Alpine Start, but we should have packed our summit packs at 7 in the light when we were fully awake. Again, route finding was difficult -- this time because of dense fog -- but we eventually found our way to the West Face Gully. On the way down we could see our misguided path in the fog go up a few hundred feet over the route and then hairpin back down. It was funny later. The snow was soft for the first couple hours out of the valley, but it firmed up as we got higher. We were plunging to knees and sometimes thighs in those early hours. We saw two larger groups w/ 6+ climbers on Casaval, which later traversed around the catwalk to the upper part of the west face. I don't recall seeing any other parties on the lower west face. Winds were ~30mph at the top of the gully, and temps were in the 20's. We summited at 11:30am, ~ 8.5hrs out of high camp. There were 10-15 people at the upper plateau & summit area... mostly skiiers who came up Avy Gulch.
We glissaded down most of the climbing route, but had to plunge step the last 1,000 vertical ft or so because the snow was too soft. Total descent time was ~2-2.5 hrs. We got out of high camp at 4:30, and back down to the trailhead at 7pm. Route finding on the way out was aided by GPS waypoints set on the way in, as well as a faint climber's trail that we found between the valley and Horse Camp. Most of the hike out involved alternating soft snow and scree. Yay.
