Lake Shastina

Well, this hike didn't go at all as planned. Let me give you the back-story. In November and December of last year, there were two storms where Mount Shasta got dumped on. One of the storms brough over two-feet of snow in 24 hours. The whole town basically shut down on that day, the plows didn't even come out. Two days later, I had to drive north and, to my complete surprise, at about the half-hour mark, there was absolutely NO SNOW on the ground! Not even piles of snow on the side of the road from the plow. Guess what, it's because they didn't need to plow the road. It turns out that most of the storm clouds get caught on Mount Shasta, so the storms don't make it north of the mountain. With that in mind, I mapped out a few trails north of town to explore when everything else is covered in snow.

Fast forward to today. The first sunny day after a week-long storm, and I needed to get out of the house to commune with nature. With the town blanketed in snow, I decided to head north and climb to the top of a butte in the middle of a lake. I knew that some snow had fallen in the area, but people move to Lake Shastina to get away from the snow, so how much could there be? Turns out A LOT!!

Now, for those of you who live in the snow, the fact that there are still plants poking up from the ground would indicate that there is only about a foot of snow, which isn't a lot. But we ran into a local man who moved here twenty years ago, and this is the first snow he has seen in all of that time. So, with the road and trail covered, we decided to park Sapphire (my little Jetta) under a tree and head out to walk in the tire tracks left by more daring (and probably lifted) vehicles.

We first headed toward the water. The lakeshore was frozen but that didn't stop the birds from frolicking around where the water was deeper. There was a piece of ice that jutted out into the middle of the lake, which formed a type of breakwater. The water on one side was rippling from the wind while water on the other side was smooth as glass.

As we walked around the tracks and headed toward the butte to get a better look, I noticed that the hill behind it was covered in a cloud. The cloud cover up here in the mountains is fascinating to me, we are actually living in the clouds. It's amazing to watch them move in and block your view of a nearby mountain like it did today. It's even more amazing to leave home on a sunny day and drive down the mountain, through what seems to be fog, only to arrive at a lower elevation and look up at the cloud you just drove through.

Ok, let me get my head out of the clouds. (Hehehe...) When I first moved here, I was enchanted by all of the lush greenery. Today, all of that green was covered in frost. Now, I'm not one for a flocked Christmas Tree, but this was truly gorgeous. It was as if Mother Nature had sprinkled millions of tiny little diamonds over this patch of wintery heaven. Everything was sparkly, and I like sparkly things.

I recently read an article about the silence that arrives after a heavy snowfall. Apparently, the air pockets between the snowflakes capture sound waves, creating a calm and peaceful environment. The serenity that exists when the ground is covered in the clean, fresh blanket of snow is palpable. I’m glad we were here alone, but more people should experience this. This is where peace lives.