Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta, CA
A solitary 14,000-foot volcano that rises two miles above the surrounding country, sacred, snow-crowned, and visible for a hundred miles.
Mount Shasta rises 14,179 feet, one of the tallest peaks in California, but its numbers understate it. Because it stands almost entirely alone, not buried in a range, it lifts nearly two vertical miles above the country around it, an isolated white cone visible from a hundred miles away. Pioneers steered by it, and it still stops travelers on Interstate 5 in their tracks.
It is a stratovolcano, still considered active though quiet, and it carries the largest glaciers in California on its shoulders. For the tribes who have lived in its shadow since time out of mind it is a sacred center of the world, and in modern times it has drawn climbers, seekers, and pilgrims to what many feel is one of the most powerful mountains on the continent.
What Guests Love
- The sheer presence of the mountain, a solitary white giant that dominates every view for miles
- Wildflower meadows and alpine lakes on the flanks, reached by the Everitt Memorial Highway
- The clear cold spring where the Sacramento River begins, in the town park
- The mountain's reputation as a place of pilgrimage, which gives the town its unusual spiritual air
Worth Knowing
- Climbing to the summit is a serious mountaineering effort requiring ice axe, crampons, skill, and a permit; it is not a hike
- Weather on the peak turns violent fast, and lenticular clouds capping the summit warn of storms
- The upper mountain holds snow and glaciers year-round, so respect the conditions even in summer
- It is a living, sacred landscape for several tribes, so treat the mountain and its springs with respect
Details
Mount Shasta, CA
Learn about Mount Shasta
A volcano of ice
Mount Shasta is a compound volcano, built up over hundreds of thousands of years by layer upon layer of eruptions, with a secondary cone called Shastina on its western flank. It last erupted a few centuries ago and is considered dormant rather than dead, one of the potentially active volcanoes of the Cascade chain that runs from Lassen north to British Columbia.
Despite its southern latitude, the mountain is high and cold enough to hold seven named glaciers, the most of any peak in California, including the Whitney and Bolam glaciers on the north side. All that ice and snow melts into springs and streams, and the mountain is the great water tower of the region.
A sacred mountain
Several Native peoples hold Mount Shasta sacred, among them the Winnemem Wintu, the Shasta, the Modoc, the Achumawi, and the Atsugewi, whose homelands ring the peak. In many of their traditions the mountain is a place of creation and of spirit, its high slopes reserved for prayer and ceremony rather than casual travel.
These are living traditions, not history. The Winnemem Wintu in particular continue to fight for their sacred sites on and around the mountain, and visitors are asked to move through this landscape, and especially its springs, with the reverence a sacred place deserves.
Climbers, seekers, and legends
The naturalist John Muir climbed Shasta in the 1870s and famously survived a brutal storm near the summit by lying all night in the mountain's own hot sulfur springs. His accounts helped make Shasta a mountaineering prize, and today thousands attempt the summit each year by routes like Avalanche Gulch, a demanding climb across snow and ice.
The mountain also became a magnet for the spiritual. A nineteenth and twentieth century legend held that a hidden city of ancient Lemurians dwelt within the peak, and the town became a gathering point for New Age seekers, especially around the 1987 Harmonic Convergence. Whatever one makes of the beliefs, they give Mount Shasta a character unlike any other mountain town.
The flanks and the seasons
You do not have to climb the peak to feel it. The Everitt Memorial Highway climbs the southern flank to trailheads at Bunny Flat and Panther Meadows, where summer brings meadows of lupine and paintbrush and a sacred spring the Wintu hold dear. Castle Lake and Heart Lake below the mountain make an easy, spectacular walk.
Summer and early fall are the season for meadows, lakes, and climbing, once the snow has softened. Winter buries the flanks deep and draws skiers to the small ski park on the mountain's shoulder. In any season, watch the summit for the strange stacked lenticular clouds that so often crown it, a sign of the weather the peak brews for itself.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Mount Shasta
Headwaters of the Sacramento River
In Mount Shasta town
A city park where the state's greatest river begins as a cold spring bubbling out of the ground, safe to drink and framed by the peak.
Castle Crags State Park
About 15 miles south
A wilderness of soaring granite spires above the Sacramento River, with trails climbing toward the crags and views back to Shasta.
Lake Siskiyou
About 3 miles
A calm reservoir at the mountain's foot with a beach, boating, and one of the most photographed reflections of Shasta anywhere.