The Home Circle by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 18, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 32.

The Home Circle.

By Editor

CLIMBING SHASTA.

THE following description of the ascent of Mount Shasta, California's most famous, though not highest, mountain, is by Rev. J. K. McLean, D. D., pastor of the First Congregational Church, Oakland, and is copied from the Oakland Tribune. We are sure that it will be read with pleasure and profit:—

The ascent of Mount Shasta is attended, ordinarily, with no extreme difficulty, nor any special amount of peril, but a prodigious amount of fatigue awaits the ordinary climber. And the tax is large, in fact, upon even the greatest powers of endurance. Many ladies have made the ascent. But, upon the other hand, a full half of all who attempt it fail, both of men and women. Sisson is the common point of departure, on the western side of the mountain. It is probably inaccessible on any other side. For some ten to twelve miles a pleasant bridle path winds about, well shaded by a beautiful forest of oak, yellow pine, sugar pine, and fir. The ascent is for seven or eight miles very gradual. Presently, however, the incline sharply increases. The trees become smaller, underbrush disappears, the sugar pines run out, and only red fir is left. A little farther, and that tree gives place to an exceedingly beautiful growth of silver firs. Shapely are these, with their tapering trunks, and symmetrically arranged branches, delicately decorated with pretty, yellow moss. The final ending of the forest is abrupt. The last trees are squat of stature, with painfully contorted trunks, and tops which bear witness to their fierce warfare with storm and wind. They have been crushed and choked out of all shape by the vast drifts of overlying winter snow. The wood of these trees is very resinous and affords a great amount of flame and heat. The snow is all gone at timber-line, however, by the middle of July, and to a long distance above that line. Some scattered stools of bunch grass and a few delicate flowers have found courage to occupy the ground. Above this, nothing but lichens, and in some spots, banks of that curious, single-celled vegetable which propagates itself among the drifts and is commonly called red snow. Between the higher edge of vegetation and the lower snow-line in later July and August, there lies a two or three-mile stretch of loose, clanking stones, which, like the eternal snows above them, have to be crossed only on foot.