About Us
About Guided Mt Shasta Climbs with Shasta Mountaineering School
Every guided climb of Mt Shasta that you book with Shasta Mountaineering School is personally guided by the owner, Shane Rathbun, who has over 15 years of experience guiding summit climbs of Mount Shasta. Shasta Mountaineering is fully insured and permitted by the Shasta-Trinity National Forest to operate on Mount Shasta.
We are a small mountain guide service committed to increased safety margins and small group sizes, and dedicated to a high quality guided climb of Mt Shasta. We will not operate trips with more than four total guests, and most routes will have a max group size limit of three. Our business strategy is focused on offering high quality trips and operating only on Mount Shasta. Shasta Mountaineering School specializes in teaching beginner summit mountaineering trips, and summit ski descents for experienced skiers. From your booking phone call to the summit, let Shane take you there and show you the difference a personally guided climb of Mt Shasta makes!
Shane Rathbun, Owner/Operator
Shane was raised in northern California and has Native American ancestral roots in the local area tracing back to the local Wintun people. As a young child, Shane learned to ski on the slopes of the Mount Shasta Ski Park with his father at the age of 4. Shane still spends part the year living in Mount Shasta, California and the other half of the year living in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Shane specializes in Mount Shasta. He has more than 50 summits of the mountain and has skied from the top more than 20 times via 8 different routes. Shane has spent many years monitoring the weather and snow conditions on Mount Shasta. He has honed his skills in pursuit of the highest quality snow conditions for top-down summit ski descents. In addition to Mount Shasta, he also has extensive mountaineering experience on Mt Rainier, Mt Adams, Mt Baker, Mt Lassen, the Alaska Range, Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, and New Zealand’s Southern Alps.
In addition to specializing in Mount Shasta, Shane also specializes in avalanche risk management. He is a certified explosives handler for snow avalanche control with 8 years of operational forecasting experience aided by all forms of explosives conveyance. He has worked as an avalanche forecaster and snow safety officer for a number of ski areas, and has performed avalanche risk management work for structures and roads for the New Zealand Government’s Department of Conservation and the United States Department of the Interior.
Over the previous ten years, Shane has worked internationally as a mountaineering ranger at a number of national parks between the United States and New Zealand. As a ranger, Shane has responded to hundreds of search and rescue calls for service often involving complex scene management, helicopters, or technical rope rigging in places like Mt Rainier National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Denali National Park, and Mt Cook National Park. He has accrued more than 100 hours of helicopter technical crew time and has experience preparing successful aerial search plans. Shane is a certified firefighter through the U.S National Park Service’s National Structural Fire Academy, and is also a New Zealand CAA-certified commercial pilot (fixed-wing).
- 50+ summits of Mt Shasta
- 20+ summit ski descents of Mt Shasta
- American Mountain Guide Association – Ski Guide Course
- Nationally Registered EMT-Basic
- MountainSafety.info – Advanced Avalanche Rescue Training Seminar
- American Avalanche Association – Professional Avalanche Worker School
- American Avalanche Institute – Avalanche Level 3
- Jim Woodmency, Meteorologist – Advanced Winter Weather Forecasting courses
- Colorado Avalanche Information Center – Winter Weather Forecasting course
- National Weather Service (Flagstaff and Salt Lake City) – Severe Thunderstorm Weather training.
- New Zealand Police – Avalanche Site Controller training
- WorkSafe New Zealand – Certified explosives handler for snow avalanche control
- Leave No Trace trainer