Mt. Shasta

It’s hot, dusty and I have been walking for 12 hours straight. All I want to do is get off this damned mountain. Right behind me are Heather Matheson and Heidi Moran, both in their early twenties, and both a little loopy after fighting their way up thousands of feet of steep snow to get to the top of Mt.

By Rishi Ahuja Climbing is hard. The thought kept rumbling around my head as I tried to put one step in front of the other, up the punishing slopes of Mt.

Four in the morning in on August 3rd, and the moon is coming up over the steep shoulder of Mt. Shasta, a 14,180-foot volcano in far northern California. I look above me and see 15 climbers pulling themselves upward, the glacier painted in small white circles where the light of their headlamps fall.