Shasta To The Sea

An ailing odyssey from volcano to coast

- Will Ritchie

It started to become almost comical, the number of stops to buy completely frivolous, totally necessary and unnecessary gear. Those extras that set your mind at ease, for moments anyway, then, damned to doom as it may be, fixation and fussing resumes. Internally it rages. You try not to let your trip companions notice, jumbling simple words: “Uh … oh, just thought since like, you know, we might want extra fuel, one cook stove and all, extra’s probably good.”

This is what happens after you’ve already packed. That’s a well of anxiety in its own right—if the mountain of gear’s big enough, the gear alone will get me through, a curious rationalization. But this was the in-between time. Transit time. Pre-regret time. Doubt with a capital ‘D.’

Paul Errington, Abner Kingman and I were attempting to pedal from the slopes of Mount Shasta westward to the Pacific Ocean, ending at Battery Point Lighthouse in Crescent City, California, near the Oregon border. Kingman would take photos, Errington, being a very real person of endurance events, would actually finish the trip, and I’d probably write about feeling sorry for myself trying to keep up with him. Errington had weathered the pre-trip email banter about fire-closure reroutes, last-minute dropping temperatures and ‘Mommy, where does bikepacking gear come from?’ type questions. He’d flown straight from the UK into my truck cab. Now we were in Mount Shasta. We had maybe a week. So long as we made it to the coast in that relative timeline, anything was par for the course.