Winter Whiteout on Mt Shasta

After checking out the weather report on the http://www.noaa.gov/ site, we decided to take advantage of a weather window on Mt Shasta. The Casaval Ridge was calling. I got my annual climbing pass from the Mt Shasta Ranger station and headed for the traihead.The road was plowed to the Bunny Flats trailhead. Bunny Flats is at 6900ft. Sometimes the gates are closed at 4700ft. This means you would have to cut 4 miles across foot of the mountain to Horse Camp. In this case, you enter the snowy foothills about 150ft before the gate which is just after the Twin Bridges enterance. You can check with the friendly Mt Shasta rangers before entering the wilderness. We acclimated and checked our gear at the trailhead. Due to high winds, we dug a pit to pitch our tent in. The map showed Horse Camp was directly North. Our compass took us straight for the ridge. Using computer Topo maps, we had placed GPS markings on the map to show the route. This was a double check for our compass readings. It proved helpful as we came off the mountain in a whiteout. Shel