Sunday, September 30, 2012

Mt. Shasta - Magnificent Views (Plus Castle Crags)

A continuation of my trip north:


What's that in the distance?
 A few more miles up and it is much closer
 Oh, there it is!
 Mt. Shasta, the second southern-most cascade volcano (Lassen is the furthest south). Still covered in glaciers in late August
 The freeway goes by Castle Crags State Park, where a granitic extrusion created these immense, complicated cliffs popular with climbers
 This is a spatter cone volcano, likely very dormant. They have ski runs on another one of these closer to the mountain
 I went up a little further to hang out in Weed, Ca. It is just too funny of a name, and if you see below, they have a 'Cougar Cafe', I'm not sure if this is a retiree community...
 The forest ends at the tree line, about half way up the slopes
 And it creates its own weather. The clouds form and are shaped by the mountain, in this case, they arch above/around the summit
 From my camping spot
 At sunset it went crazy pretty
 These colors don't do it justice, it turned pink and then purple
 Almost gone
 Bye bye sun
 The morning brought very cool cloud formations


 One of the volcanic remnants, I liked the red dirt on top
The summit, also with a touch of red
 Wispy clouds go by
 So etherial on the slopes
 More mountain cloud formations, see them dome over the promontories
 A mini volcano in the sky
 This is the crags from about the tree line
 It just went forever with the mist of forest fires all around

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