Page 158 - 2020 Travel Guide to California

SHASTA CASCADE
A mystical mountain watches 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
visitsiskiyoucounty.com
shastacascade.com
discoverklamath.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 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 southern-
most of the Cascade peaks, erupted in 1914-1917, 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, rel-
atively unvisited gems that are popular venues for fly fishing
156 2020 TRAVEL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA
SISKIYOU COUNTY. OPPOSITE: LARRY HABEGGER