Jim and David's visit to CA

Last week Jim (my brother) and David (my cousin) came out to visit the Ranch. It was a great week. We stayed really busy and packed alot into the week. I picked them up at the airport in Medford and then we drove straight back to the Ranch. We decided to hike up on Etna Summit and camp for the night in the snow. The hiking was very hard because the snow was nearly waist deep. Pictures are on the way. It was a cold night but the three of us stayed warm in my tent. The next morning we hiked out early. Jim and David went to Mt. Shasta to snowboard but I had to stay at the Ranch to work. We had alot of fun hanging out every night. Friday we went to Mt. Shasta to snowshoe. It was a beautiful day. We hiked to about 9200ft. The views were incredible! The next day Jim and I returned to Shasta to try to climb to the top. Our packs were heavy and the weather report was not very good for Sunday. We hiked to 10,000 feet and camped. We had to dig into the side of the hill to build a shelter to block the wind. It was a long night. We cooked dinner and then the wind started to blow. It was gusting up to 50mph that night. I thought the tent poles were going to collapse. Neither one of us slept much that night. It also snowed about 10 inches during the night. We woke up at 2am to start the summit climb. When we looked out the door of the tent the weather was to bad to try to climb to the summit so we decided to sleep for awhile. We woke up a few hours later to hike back to the car. Visibility was about 10 ft. We thought it would improve as we descended but it got worse. We got off course on the way down but Jim was able to get us back on track. It only took us a few hours to get back to the car and then we went into town to eat a good meal. I finally bought Kathryn's (my sister) birthday present (a few months late). It was a fun climb even though we did not get to make a summit attempt. The next day I took Jim and David to the airport. It was great to have them here for the week. It really made me miss being home.