Mount Shasta: A Guide to Climbing, Skiing, and Exploring California's Premier Mountain

by Andy Selters, Michael Zanger

Overview

Discover Mount Shasta’s many routes, which offer exhilaration and challenge for beginning and experienced climbers, hikers, and skiers.

Mount Shasta is California’s premier, stand-alone, 14,000-foot mountain—with the largest and longest glaciers in the state. Along with Washington’s Mount Rainier, Mount Shasta is one of the two most prominent large mountains in the contiguous United States. It is sought after by so many climbers and skiers nationwide because it offers such a wide variety of routes, especially moderate ones for the aspiring mountaineer and backcountry skier. It inspires thousands of visitors each year—and with expert guidance from two professional mountaineers, you can be among them.

The fully updated fourth edition of Mount Shasta, by Andy Selters and Michael Zanger, is the most comprehensive and detailed guide to this large, varied, historic, and coveted mountain for climbing and skiing. The guidebook presents dozens of trips on the mountain and in its surrounding areas, as well as extensive details on weather, climbing and skiing conditions, amenities, history, and more. Plus, the book also comes with a foldout map of the Mount Shasta Wilderness!

Book Features:

• 17 climbing routes
• 15 skiing and snowboarding routes
• 8 hiking and backpacking trips
• Many variations to the suggested routes
• Bonus: large, foldout topographic map showing all the mountain’s routes and variations

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780899978673
Publisher:	Wilderness Press
Publication date:	06/19/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

A proud Jersey girl at heart, Natalie Pompilio has embraced almost everything Philadelphia. (She’ll never give up her New York sports teams, though!) She loves soft pretzels with mustard, cobblestone streets, her row house home and neighbors, streets so narrow a car can’t pass, the hammocks at Spruce Street Harbor Park, and the singing fountain on Passyunk Avenue. Her favorite way to travel the city is using the Indego bike share. Inspired by muralist Isaiah Zagar, she has completed multiple mosaics in her neighborhood with the blessing of property owners. She loves reading above most things and is a frequent visitor to the Charles Santoro branch of the Philadelphia Free Library system. If she’s not in Philadelphia, you’ll probably find her in New Orleans, where she rides with the Krewe of Muses during Carnival season. She’s crafty—not in the way the Beastie Boys sang about, but in the way that she could probably build you a house with a hot-glue gun.

Read an Excerpt

Castle Dome
5.6 miles round trip, moderate

The Castle Crags startle most drivers on I-5, as the granite parapets, spires, pinnacles and domes rise above the surrounding hills with a surreal grandeur. The popular hike described here brings one to some spectacular views right among the crags. While the hike is quite an inspiring climb, it’s but an introduction to “The Crags.” Acres and acres of towers and hidden valleys extend behind what one can see. Many of the crags are known to climbers, and some of the high valleys were the last hideouts for Indians.

A campground and the first half of the trail are in a state park, while most of Castle Crags is national forest wilderness. At present no permit is needed to enter Castle Crags Wilderness, but there is a fee to enter the State Park.

TRAILHEAD
From I-5 take the Castella exit, which is 14 miles south of Mount Shasta and 47 miles north of Redding. On the west side of the freeway, keep right and drive past the Castella Tavern and post office, and keep right again to reach the entrance to Castle Crags State Park. Here there is a day-use charge, which also admits one to the showers in the campground. From the entrance station follow trailhead signs for Castle Dome through the campground onto a steeply switchbacking road, which ends at a trailhead parking lot 1.3 miles from the entrance station.

DESCRIPTION
From the road’s last curve your hike starts west on a broad, flat path in the shade of Douglas-firs and black oaks. In 0.3 mile you come to a junction from which a spur trail contours north for 0.6 mile to Root Creek. Your trail continues west and starts climbing, soon arriving at a junction with the Pacific Crest Trail at a clearing for power lines atop Kettlebelly Ridge. You continue climbing west, back into the forest.

After a couple of steep switchbacks the path rises gradually, turning north around a ridge and climbing past your first close-up view of the crags. To the southwest another group of cliffs, Grey Rocks, pokes up as well. You next arrive at a forested saddle from where a spur trail contours off west for 0.3 mile to Indian Springs, a refreshing oasis shaded by big-leaf maples.

From this junction the trail continues north to a dramatic vista of the 1200-foot east face of Castle Dome, looming over the Root Creek drainage, and Mt. Shasta beyond. From here you turn back into the woods for another quarter mile before coming upon outlying spires. The trail switchbacks and weaves over a craggy notch, then continues to climb steadily beneath a series of 100-300-foot walls. Along, rising traverse brings you to a few rocky switchbacks and, climbing these brings you to the shoulder below the south face of Castle Dome.

West of this manzanita-covered shoulder some of the other spectacular crags rise in all their bold jaggedness. The Castle Crags are an uplift of granodiorite fairly similar to that of the Sierra, but for reasons unknown lying some distance from that range. Geologists speculate that the Crags—and the entire Klamath region—originally were connected to the present north end of the Sierra, but if so they were long ago displaced to the west by some as yet undiscovered faulting.

The maintained trail ends at this shoulder below Castle Dome. However, a use trail winds farther north-northwest through the manzanita, becoming a deeply eroded rut where one must clamber over exposed roots. This rut brings you to the saddle west of Castle Dome, where you can wander among some outcrops and look over the headwaters of Root Creek, an extensive palace of slabs and spires. Take care in scrambling over any rocks, for in places the potential fall is very serious. A fenced overlook right at the base of Castle Dome offers a particularly breathtaking view.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
2 Weather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
3 Hiking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Hiking on Shasta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Hiking Near Shasta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
4 Climbing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65

Area: Southwest Side of Mt. Shasta from Sargents Ridge to Cascade Gulch . . . . . . . . . . . . .70

Area: Shastina to the Hotlum-Bolam Ridge . . . .89

Area: North and Northeast Sides, Hotlum and Wintun Glaciers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101

Area: East and Southeast Sides, Clear Creek, Mud Creek Canyon and Konwakiton Glaciers 111
5 Skiing, Snowboarding, and Ski-touring . . . . . . .115
6 Water Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133
7 Mountain Biking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141
8 Flora and Fauna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
9 Geology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155
10 Amenities, Sources and Other Information . . . .161
Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .170
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
Map Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174
Aerial Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175