San Jose man crawls to safety after 500-foot slide down Mount Shasta

Officials in Siskiyou County are reminding climbers to take key safety precautions after a Bay Area man was forced to crawl to shelter after being injured while descending Mount Shasta. 

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The individual, described as a young man from San Jose by the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, was climbing Mount Shasta on his own on Sept. 10 and eventually summited the over 14,000-foot-high mountain at around 7:30 p.m.

The sheriff’s office said he attempted to glissade down the mountain, a technique where a climber sits for a controlled slide down a snowy mountain. But instead of a smooth ride down, the climber lost control during the glissade, ultimately sliding 500 feet and suffering severe lacerations on his feet. The man’s cellphone had lost power shortly after the summit, and as a result, he was forced to self-rescue.

“The climber then removed his boots due to painful swelling and crawled through the night, down the remainder of Avalanche Gulch to the Horse Camp cabin,” the sheriff’s office said in the news release posted on Facebook.

The man’s friends had expected him to check in on Sept. 11 and alerted rescue officials when he neglected to do so. Multiple teams, including U.S. Forest Service personnel, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office’s search and rescue team and a California Highway Patrol helicopter, started the search around 2 p.m. on Sept. 11. 

Two hours later, a hiker entered Horse Camp and discovered the injured San Jose man. The man was then airlifted out of the camp for treatment at a local hospital. Photos from the scene show the man being helped out of the camp by two members of the rescue team. 

Sage Milestone, a spokesperson for the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, told SFGATE in an email that the climber was “very disoriented” and unable to provide exact information about where he was injured. But Milestone clarified the snow line ends at 10,600 feet, so at a minimum, he would have had to crawl for another 1.8 miles to get to shelter.

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“The entire descent below snow line is one big rocky scree slope, so it would have been very slow going for him in any condition,” Milestone told SFGATE.

The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said in the news release that the man’s ordeal highlights how important it is to tell a friend or family member your plans when climbing in remote areas and to not rely solely on GPS or cellphones when navigating this terrain. 

They also advised anyone looking to climb Mount Shasta to make sure they have plenty of daylight left when descending the mountain, noting that anyone who hasn’t reached the peak by noon should turn around. 

This isn’t the first Mount Shasta rescue to make headlines in recent weeks. In August, three climbers had to be rescued from the mountain after using artificial intelligence to plan their trip and neglecting to bring enough supplies. The group summited the mountain at 7 p.m., well after the recommended noontime cutoff, and lost navigation when their phone with the AllTrails app lost power. One member of the group suffered a knee injury during the descent, forcing them to spend an unplanned night on the mountain. The group was eventually rescued the following morning and told their rescuers, “We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking.”