The Shasta Cascade
A white volcano floating over everything, waterfalls that never dry up, and the emptiest, starriest corner of California.
North of the valley towns the state changes registers. This is volcano country — Mount Shasta's white cone visible from a hundred miles, Lassen still steaming from the last eruption, lava-tube caves running black under the sagebrush — stitched together by an absurd abundance of water: spring-fed rivers that run cold and constant out of the rock, a falls Theodore Roosevelt reportedly called the eighth wonder of the world, and the houseboat waters of the state's biggest lake. It is also, gloriously, the part of California nobody's in. Lassen is among the least crowded national parks in the West, the Trinity Alps hold granite and glacier lakes with no permit lottery, and out east in the Warners you can have a whole mountain range essentially to yourself.
The Cascades are the volcanic arc of the Pacific Northwest, and California keeps their two heavyweights. Mount Shasta is the region's fixed point — a 14,179-foot stratovolcano carrying the state's largest glaciers, so huge and solitary it seems to float above the country around it; the poet Joaquin Miller called it lonely as God and white as a winter moon. Lassen Peak, the world's largest plug-dome volcano, blew itself open in May 1915 — the last California eruption, photographed mid-blast — and its park is a working volcano museum: all four volcano types on Earth inside one boundary, with Bumpass Hell's boardwalks crossing boiling ground. Quieter but vaster, the Medicine Lake shield to the northeast is the largest volcano by volume in the entire Cascade arc, and its lava flows hide more than eight hundred tube caves at Lava Beds — the densest concentration in North America. Then, west of all of it, the rules change: the Trinity Alps and Marble Mountains are ancient Klamath-terrane rock, granite and marble older than the Sierra, holding glacier-scoured lake basins where California's youngest landscape meets some of its oldest.
4 more chapters, plus when to go and the gateway towns — included with the Atlas subscription. Every destination in this region is listed below, free.
See plans →The Sacramento River through Redding is one of the finest wild-trout tailwaters in the western United States — a big, cold, pow…
Mount Shasta is one of the great ski mountaineering objectives in North America — a 14,179-foot active stratovolcano in the sou…
Mount Shasta is the great solitary volcano of Northern California and the state's classic mountaineering objective — for many c…
Lassen Peak is a chance to stand atop an active volcano — a 10,457-foot plug dome that erupted spectacularly from 1914 to 1917 …
The single most spectacular volcanic hike in the park — a symmetrical jet-black cinder cone rising straight out of a lava field…
A punchy, high-payoff waterfall hike right off the park highway near its highest point. The trail drops through meadow and fore…
The park's signature easy walk and its most-photographed view: a nearly flat loop around a clear lake that mirrors snow-streake…
The single most photographed reflection of Mount Shasta comes from this tiny pond perched above Castle Lake — the peak mirrored…
A 220-foot cascade that was essentially lost to the maps until 2004, now the headline hike of the Redding side. The graded clim…
This is the reason Lava Beds is marquee: the densest concentration of accessible lava-tube caves in North America, most of them…
Manzanita Lake is the jewel of Lassen Volcanic National Park — a serene alpine lake that perfectly mirrors the snow-streaked co…
Shasta Lake, California's largest reservoir, sprawls across the foothills north of Redding with 365 miles of shoreline and doze…
Shasta Lake, California's largest reservoir, sprawls across the foothills north of Redding in a great four-armed maze with 365 …
The Trinity River is one of California's most beloved steelhead rivers — a Klamath tributary winding through the forested canyo…
The Upper Sacramento is one of the great comeback stories in American fly fishing - a fast, tumbling freestone river through th…
Manzanita Lake is one of the West's premier catch-and-release stillwater trout fisheries - a serene, spring-fed lake in the nor…
Everitt Memorial Highway is the marquee road climb of the volcanic north - a quiet, smoothly paved highway that leaves Mount Sh…
Mount Shasta, the 14,179-foot volcano dominating far Northern California, is the state's great mountaineering objective — a mas…
Lake Siskiyou is the postcard shot of the whole region - 14,179-foot Mount Shasta mirrored in glassy water at dawn, the lake ri…
Whiskeytown is a National Recreation Area with unusually clear, blue-green water for a lowland reservoir, and quiet forested in…
Lassen Volcanic National Park, in the remote southern Cascades of far northern California, is a superb and under-appreciated da…
The McCloud River does something unusual — it delivers three completely distinct swimming experiences in a single 3-mile trail …
Lassen Peak is the southern anchor of the Cascade volcanic chain and one of the largest plug-dome volcanoes on Earth — it last …
Lava Beds is the best national monument in California that most Californians have never visited. It is so far in the northeast …
Lake Shasta Caverns has the most unusual access of any California cave system — to reach it, you board a ferry that crosses an …
The connoisseur's summit — a sustained 2,600-foot climb up the eroded flank of Mount Tehama, the giant extinct stratovolcano th…
Eddy is the grandstand — the best full-frontal view of Mount Shasta anywhere, earned via the PCT past the swimmable Deadfall La…
The definitive Trinity Alps backpack. A long, gentle river-canyon walk through Morris Meadows delivers you to a granite headwal…
The Caribou Basin holds the biggest lakes in the wilderness, cupped beneath the jagged Sawtooth. The trail climbs to a high sad…
The McCloud River, tumbling through a deep, forested canyon on the flanks of Mount Shasta, is one of California's most storied …
Fall River and nearby Hat Creek are California's finest spring creeks — glassy, gin-clear, weed-choked streams fed by constant …
The road through Lassen Volcanic National Park is one of the great high-alpine rides in California - Highway 89 climbs past bub…
The Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway is California's designated volcanic road, threading roughly 75 miles of forest and lava countr…
The Lake Almanor loop is the region's friendliest road ride - a gentle, mostly flat circuit of about 30 to 35 miles around a bi…
Redding is the region's cycling hub, and its Sacramento River Trail is the easy, car-free heart of it - some 17 miles of smooth…
In the remote high-desert basins straddling the Oregon border, the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex hosts one of …