Hike Mt. Shasta

It is pretty obvious from a quick perusal of this site that I am a huge fan of cloud activity. The landscape is the canvas but atmospherics and light are the paints that make the image on the canvas special. Perhaps it is the fleeting aspect of the clouds and light in tension with the interminable constant of the landscape that I find so captivating.

The 9th of June was witness to some epic cloud activity in the sky over Mount Shasta. It wasn’t lenticulars or some other odd spectacle in the sky. This time it was a classic thunderstorm, but one in which the clouds were overwhelmingly magnificent in both scale and arrangement. Naturally, I had to get out and document it in the midst of all the other things I needed to get done.

This time lapse taken from a fire alert camera shows the incredible growth and maturation of the storm. Watching the clear skies fill with brooding towers and then seeing those swallowed up by the thunderstorms is rather startling. Some other highlights come at the end, when the setting sun finds some breaches in the moving clouds and the beams of sunset light can be seen traveling across the Shasta Valley and Mount Shasta. Missing from the time lapse were lightning strikes and rainbows, both of which were visible from the valley floor. Regardless, it is an awesome bit of footage.

Though I wanted to get out earlier, I wasn’t able to break away until just after noon. By that time the clouds had expanded to a massive tower above Mount Shasta and were starting to extend northward in a tumultuous sheet.

Heading north into the Shasta Valley to get a different perspective, the size of the thunderheads forming over the mountain were humbling. Considering the mountain looms nearly 12,000 feet over the Shasta Valley, these clouds were easily 30,000 feet high.

As the sunset approached, I headed back out into the valley. Though it was my planned destination, I opted not to go to Truchas Ridge this time. I stopped short in order to capture a fleeting rainbow that appeared over Black Butte. It had not been raining when I had come from Mount Shasta, so the precipitation bringing the rainbow had to have just started.

The rainbow faded quickly, but was promptly followed by the sunset light racing across the valley. The sun had nearly set and the low angle of the light found a gap in the clouds that allowed it to shine on Mount Shasta and the hills of the valley. The movement of the clouds and the sun’s rapid descent meant the light moved quickly across the landscape. I was hoping the clouds would light up but it was not to be. Nonetheless, the sailing light was a magnificent sight to witness.

Finally, the sun well below the horizon, only Mount Shasta and some nearby clouds had any of the fading color left on them. In the midst of this, the storm continued, intensifying over the Whaleback. A few bolts of lightning streaked down. I think one hit Ash Creek Butte. I wasn’t fast enough to capture any of them. It left me wanting a bit but the entire sequence of events in the sky was pretty hard to be ungrateful for. It was tremendous.