Page 124 - 2018 Travel Guide to California

SHASTA CASCADE
A mystical mountain towers over
an outdoor adventure paradise
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
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 strange-
looking 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 reli-
gions have been founded on its flanks.
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 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.
122 2018 T R AV E L G U I D E TO C A L I F O R N I A