As I've said before here, I first planned to climb Mount Shasta after climbing Lassen Peak, which is 10,457 ft high, and actually an active volcano. One does not climb all 10,457 feet of it, of course, as the parking lot at the base of it is already at 8000 feet. Lassen Peak is part of the Cascade Range that extends all the way up into Canada. Mt. St. Helens is part of this same range. In fact, Mt. St. Helens and Lassen Peak are the only two volcanoes in the Range to have erupted in the last century.

Mount Shasta is the second-highest peak in the Cascade Range, at 14,187 ft. (The highest peak is Mt. Rainier in Washington state at 14,411 ft.) Unlike Lassen Peak, one does start at a lower altitude, with a total elevation gain of 7,300 ft.

At the time of climbing Lassen, I thought, rather foolishly, that I might just drive up some weekend in September or October and climb Mt. Shasta as well. And this very stupidity is why people should read books. There was, really, no chance of my making the summit of Mt. Shasta at that point--mainly because I didn't know how strenuous a climb it was, nor that only advanced climbers climb in those later months (the main climbing season is April through early July), nor that it would require me being in much better shape than I was, nor that I would have to have much more serious mountaineering gear, and so on. My sheer ignorance of the matter was vast. I barely knew what a crampon was.

The first break in my ignorance arrived with the very good book, Climbing Mount Shasta, written by Steve Lewis. Lewis takes one through the entire ordeal, from preparation, to summit, and descent. Along the way, new words arrive: belay, scree, self-arrest, etc.

Shortly after reading the book, I begin to investigate various online mountaineering stores, but still in an intermittant manner, as Lewis's book did put a scare into me about the dangers of climbing Mount Shasta, especially alone. People do die on the mountain, broken bones occur, various, serious altitude-related illnesses, like HAPE, can happen, and so on. I begin to doubt myself. My interest wanes but doesn't disappear. I watch Mount Everest films from Netflix, amazed at the infamous Ice Fields, which lie just at the start of the climb, above Base Camp. The area is crisscrossed with wide crevasses that require, at times, multiple ladders to be tied together with rope and lain over the abysses. The climber then walks on the rungs with crampons (!), while the ladders bounce from the weight. I would read, later on, that these ice fields and crevasses are crossed multiple times in the acclimitization period. Of course, Mount Shasta is NOT Mount Everest. Mount Everest is twice as high. But I was doing a proper job of scaring myself silly by inference.

MORE TO COME

Mount Shasta

Portishead's long overdue third album, titled Third, will be released in three days. Here's the video to the first single, "Machine Gun," followed by their early and only short film, "To Kill a Dead Man."

"Charlie Rose" by Samuel Beckett



Kudos to Viscount M. on notifying Esther of this lost play.

American Consumer Index:

Finished Isle of the Signatories, The Lost Explorer, The Romance of Happy Workers, and Climbing High.

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Received:

Envelope of Night, Michael Burkard, Nighboat Books, 2008.

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Watched:

Death on the Nile (1978). I don't like the whole form of these films, where the suspects are questioned, everyone seems like a possible murderer, and then there's the laying-out of who done it. So you don't have all the information at all. The Deduction period is supposed to show how amazing the Inspector is, but it's really just badly done. One has to sit for an explanation based on evidence which was not there for a viewer, so one feels like they're being told something, which is never as much fun as being part of the deduction.

We watched Luis Buñuel's Viridiana last night. I had seen his early Surrealist films many times, and also his late work many times, but from the middle period I have not seen as many. I believe I've only seen Los Olvidados and El Bruto. Viridiana contains many delights, including an incestual uncle, a nun-to-be who believes she's been "compromised," impoverished drifters--thankfully unsaintly, and little girls peeking into terrace windows, ashes on beds, black bulls believed to be coming out of cupboards, an arrogant heir, fallow fields, and so on. The Last Supper scene at the end recalls the wedding dinner in Freaks. Google gobble.

Two more today:

The Lost Explorer--Finding Mallory on Mount Everest, Conrad Anker and David Roberts, Touchstone, 2001.

Climbing High--A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy, Lene Gammelgaard, Seal Press, 1999.

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Finished Into Thin Air, Starlight and Storm, and Touching the Void.

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We watched No Country For Old Men last night. What started off as a possibly new tonal frontier for the Coen Brothers devolved into more of the same cheap banter, as in their other films. They cannot seem to maintain anything remotely serious, to extend tension, without lightening it with quips and tossed-off comebacks. The intelligence of the script also went away after the transponder was located in the satchel, which is what I predicted to my wife, who didn't, it should be noted, seem impressed by my prophecy.

We have now seen three of the five Academy Award nominated films--No Country For Old Men, Michael Clayton, and There Will Be Blood. I really have no interest in seeing Atonement or Juno. Michael Clayton was a competent thriller, nothing more, really nothing less, but it featured perhaps my favorite female actor, Tilda Swinton, so it goes up a few notches. There Will Be Blood did contain some over-acting, to be sure, and the tension in it drifted after 2/3rds of the way in, but I still found it to be the better wrestler of bigger ideas of the three films. The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, took a long leap in ambition in this film, and mostly glissaded past his earlier films' potholes of sentimentality. I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes from here.

"Together we have known apprehension, uncertainty and fear; but of what importance is all that? For it was only up there that we discovered many things of which we had previously known nothing: a joy that was new to us, happiness that was doubled because it was shared, a wordless friendship which was no mere superficial impulse.

We felt at once that our ordinary lives and their pleasures no longer satisfied us, and as we came down towards the plains, nostalgia for the heights grew in us."

--Gaston Rébuffat, Starlight and Storm

I have been planning an attempt to climb Mt. Shasta for about six months now, ever since I climbed Brokeoff Mountain and Lassen Peak last September. Shasta is a big leap in preparation, as one needs a decent sleeping bag (mummy), crampons, various layers of clothing, outer shell, puffy (as they're called), inner synthetic layer, mountaineering boots, ice axe, wraparound sunglasses to stop the glaring sun above and from it reflecting off of the white snow, a 4000 cu. backpack, hat, pants, gloves, tent, stove, food, hiking poles, etc. One also must be in shape, something which I failed in doing for the last half of 2007. Since January I've taken up jogging, beginning in pathetic style, completely fatigued and coughing, whereas now I can jog for 35 minutes straight. One must also read books on the subject, talk to other climbers, become familiar with the mountain and the route. John Muir survived a whiteout blizzard on the mountain decades ago, barely living to tell this tale.

Since I began exploring the areas around Chico, my interest in hiking and mountain climbing has increased. Whether in the Sierra Nevada foothills, hiking to see the falls above the Feather River, moving through the fumes of volcanic Lassen national park, or wandering around in Whiskeytown, or in the Yolla-Bollys, or the Navarro Forest, or Black Butte lake, etc., I've really enjoyed the silences and the unexpected turns, the physical activity and the views, being with others or alone.

I've been reading many books on mountaineering over the past two years, and yesterday I bought some more. Here's the list:

Touching the Void, Joe Simpson, HarperCollins, 2004.

Starlight and Storm--The Conquest of the Great North Faces of the Alps, Gaston Rébuffat, Modern Library, 1999.

Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer, Anchor Books, 1997.

In the Shadow of Denali--Life and Death on Alaska's Mt. McKinley, Jonathan Waterman, The Lyons Press, 1998.