Page 160 - 2014 Travel Guide to California

SHASTA CASCADE
Discover the great outdoors with a mystical
mountain, mud pots and more
B Y J O H N F L I N N
TOP CITIES
Redding, Mount Shasta City, Weaverville, Weed,
Chico, Oroville
GATEWAY
Redding Municipal Airport (RDD) has flights from
Los Angeles and San Francisco, and is 9 miles (14 km)
from the Redding city center
TOURISM WEBSITES
visitsiskiyou.org
shastacascade.com
visitredding.com
POPULATION
274,000
SHASTA
CASCADE
“Lonely as god, and white as a winter moon,” is how Joaquin
Miller, “the poet of the Sierras,” described Mount Shasta.
The snow-tipped peak has long held a mysterious attrac-
tion for poets, artists, adventurers and New Age mystics.
At least two religions have been founded on the flanks of the
mountain, which some believe to be a vortex for spiritual activity,
and a race of psychically advanced people named the Lemurians is
rumored to live inside.
Mount Shasta is the focal point of one of California’s least-popu-
lated regions, a land of high-desert tumbleweeds, majestic rivers and
craggy volcanoes. This is where the West Coast’s two major moun-
tain 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.
CHRISTOPHER BOSWELL/SHUTTERSTOCK. OPPOSITE: LARRY HABEGGER
158 2014 T R AV E L G U I D E T O C A L I F O R N I A