SHASTA CASCADE
A mystical mountain watches over an outdoor adventure paradise
Poets, artists, adventurers and New Age mystics are drawn inexorably to snow-capped Mount Shasta, which juts 14,179 feet into the Northern California sky. It is such an imposing presence that it creates its own weather—most notably the strangelooking lenticular clouds that form on its summit. Some people see in them a jaunty beret, others a UFO mother ship. Some believe the mountain to be a vortex for spiritual activity, and at least two religions have been founded on its flanks.
Mount Shasta is the focal point of one of California’s least-populated regions, a land of high-desert tumbleweeds, majestic rivers and craggy volcanoes. This is where the West Coast’s two major mountain ranges—the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades—run headlong into each other.
Just to the south of Shasta, Mount Lassen, the southernmost of the Cascade peaks, erupted less than a century ago, spewing ash as far as 200 miles away. Today, pots of boiling mud and steam vents smelling of rotten eggs attest that this volcano is far from dormant.
To the west rise the Trinity Alps and Marble Mountains, relatively unvisited gems that are popular venues for fly fishing and horseback trips. To the north, the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge, which extends into southern Oregon, is part of the Pacific Flyway: In the fall its skies are darkened by more than a million migratory birds.
City & Town
For travelers, Redding was nothing more than a pit stop along Interstate 5 until the opening of the instantly iconic Sundial Bridge across the Sacramento River in 2004. On the lower flanks of its namesake peak, Mount Shasta City sports a main street lined with New Age bookstores and shops selling crystals said to have mystical powers. No less an authority than James Hilton, author of Lost Horizon, once claimed that the pretty alpine hamlet of Weaverville, gateway to the Trinity Alps, was the closest he’s ever come to a real-life Shangri-la.
The Great Outdoors
Mount Shasta is irresistible to climbers; in the spring, summit-seekers are strung out along its most popular routes like ants on an anthill. To get to the top you need an ice axe, crampons and the skill to use them safely. But on Mount Lassen, its neighbor to the south, a well-graded trail runs all the way to the 10,457-foothigh summit. World-class fly fishing abounds in the Trinity Alps, and those willing to walk a short distance with their rods are almost guaranteed a spot to themselves. On the Salmon River, between the Trinity Alps and Marble Mountains, Otter Bar Lodge (otterbar.com) is one of the West’s premier whitewater kayaking schools.
Heritage & Culture
The Shasta Tribe of Native Americans, a band of hunters and fishermen who lived in cedar-plank houses with basements, once occupied much of what is now farnorthern California and southern Oregon. Their population dropped rapidly as settlers seized land following the discovery of gold in Yreka and Upper Soda Springs in 1850. To the east, at what is now Lava Beds National Monument, the Modoc tribe and the U.S. Army fought the
last of the Indian wars in California in 187273. In the late 1880s, the Central Pacific Railroad spurred development of the timber and tourism industries, and in the 1970s, New Age seekers began filtering into the area, culminating in 1987’s “Harmonic Convergence,” which identified Shasta as one of the world’s “power centers.”
Family Fun
The Sundial Bridge is the big draw, but for families, the surrounding Turtle Bay Exploration Center in Redding offers a full day’s worth of activities emphasizing the Sacramento River watershed, including an aquarium, museum, zoo, botanical garden and a recreated logging camp. turtlebay.org