Mount Shasta

Mount Shasta is a 14,179-foot stratovolcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range, ringed by glaciers and visible for a hundred miles. It sits inside the Mount Shasta Wilderness, where most of the mountain above treeline is federally protected and climbing requires only a free wilderness permit and a modest summit pass. For the Winnemem Wintu, the Shasta and the Klamath peoples the mountain is a sacred being rather than a recreation destination; Wintu practitioners from the McCloud River area continue ceremonies on its slopes today.

Since the 1880s the mountain has also anchored a parallel, non-Native mythology: the Lemurian survivors said to live in hidden cities beneath the peak, popularized by the Rosicrucian movement's 1931 book and later by the I AM movement of the 1930s, whose founder's visions on the mountain began the tradition that now runs its own centers nearby. The towns at its foot are dense with metaphysical bookshops and retreat centers, and the mountain functions as one of North America's busiest modern pilgrimage destinations. The honest framing is the entries' own: the Lemurian lore is modern invention layered on the mountain, and the Native nations have not endorsed it.

Visiting

Climbing runs through the Shasta-Trinity National Forest's wilderness page: free wilderness permit year-round, a summit pass above ten thousand feet, trailheads at Bunny Flat and others.