Month: August 2022

How climbing California’s Mt. Shasta ended in a death

How climbing California’s Mt. Shasta ended in a death

Published by Sam Flores

MT. SHASTA — The couple from Seattle had a taste for adventure but little alpine experience, so they hired Jillian Webster, a professional mountain guide, to help them climb Mt. Shasta — one of California’s most dramatic peaks. The trio crawled from their tents partway up the mountain at 2:30 a.m. on June 6 and set out for the summit. Snow and rain had forced climbers to turn back the day before, but that Monday the weather was nearly perfect, so clear one of Webster’s clients remembers looking to the heavens and being awed by the sight of the Milky Way. With crampons on their boots and ice axes in hand, they spent hours kicking and clawing their way up the snowy route known as Avalanche Gulch. They did not know that, up ahead, an extremely hard, slick layer of ice was waiting for them at the worst possible place, on the steepest section of the climb at about 12,000 feet elevation. When they reached that stretch, one of Webster’s co-workers from Shasta Mountain Guides, who was …

Find shade during excessive heat at L.A.-area parks, gardens

Find shade during excessive heat at L.A.-area parks, gardens

Published by Sam Flores

East Ventura County gets hot in the summer, but if you’re lucky enough to live near Conejo Valley Botanic Garden in Thousand Oaks, you’ve got a cool, shady — and free! — place to visit every day, filled with ever-changing flowers, shrubs and trees to keep the walk interesting. The garden is on a hill, so the paths are like wide, gentle switchbacks with lovely views at the top. There are some modestly steep climbs in places. Be sure to wear sturdy walking shoes and bring your own water. There are restrooms in the parking area, next to the adjacent Conejo Community Park. This is a good place to bring children, with a stream running through, bridges here and there, and plenty of plant diversity, from a rare-fruit orchard and oak grove to gardens dedicated to butterflies, a bird habitat, desert cactuses and succulents, herbs, Australian plants, colorful native salvia and a “Trail of Trees” (more than 50 varieties of trees planted in 2005 to restore a slope covered with invasive mustard weed). The Rare …

One last trip: Gabriella Walsh’s decision to die — and celebrate life — on her own terms

One last trip: Gabriella Walsh’s decision to die — and celebrate life — on her own terms

Published by Sam Flores

Gabriella Walsh knew she wanted to die on a Saturday. She’d settled on July 16, dressing that morning in a flower crown and a T-shirt with a picture of a dragonfly, an image that had comforted her in recent weeks. She took a deep inhale from a bottle of lavender oil and listened to a playlist of sea sounds. Earlier in the morning, friends and family nuzzled up against her in bed. Rest easy, they told her, and keep wandering. “I just feel like I’m going on a trip,” she said calmly. Melanda Woo, left, embraces Gabriella a few hours before Gabriella dies through medical aid. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times) Within two hours, she would drink a fatal dose of medications prescribed under California’s death-with-dignity law, which allows some terminally ill patients to request drugs to end their lives. Classic stories from the Los Angeles Times’ 143-year archive The option had given her profound comfort in her final weeks — as had knowing that, in the end, she’d have Jack Barsegyan, the registered …