Hike Mt. Shasta

Yesterday morning I had to get up early to get my son to his Friday enrichment class. Normally the kids arrive at 8:30 but this time they were leaving their school at 7:00 to head down to Redding. That meant getting there around 6:45. My son and I are both early risers, so we were out the door with no trouble. However, the time he needed to be at school just about coincided with sunrise. Just to torment me, there was a very large, well-formed lenticular disk over the mountain and as it was in view, it was catching the morning light just before the sun broke the horizon. It was awesome. I, however, was steadfast and rather than stopping I proceeded to his school…only to get there before everyone else. In retrospect, I had plenty of time to stop and grab a great shot of the sunrise. Argh!

I headed back out after dropping him off, this time to find that the clouds has totally closed in and the mountain was no longer even visible. I went north to the Shasta Valley, caught a great view of the lenticular, only to have it once again covered over by clouds before I was in a position to capture an image of it. Such is life. This time it was just not meant to be.

Later in the morning I was out again and I was keeping an eye on the cloud. It had collapsed into some wispy tendrils just above Mount Shasta. I figured I ought to stop an get a few images of it, suspicious that it was doomed to dissipate altogether. As I did, the cloud continuously changed as the air currents flew past the mountain’s summit. While not the great cloud from sunrise, it had its own, delicate beauty.