Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1893 — MOUNT SHASTA. [ARTICLE]

MOUNT SHASTA.

One of the Most Beautiful Solitary Peaks of North America. Cor. Baltimore American. Among the pines at the foot of Shasta is the little town of Sisson. The trains stop here for meals. This js a very good idea, for at Sisson there is always a magnificent feast—for the eye. One could sit for hours at the Sisson station and gaze at Shasta. The feeling is the same that steals over one were he standing before Niagara, or on the seashore, with the boundless ocean before him. Travelers declare that it is the most impressive mountain in the world, for it stands solitary and alone. Unlike Pike’s Peak and many other of the world’s great mountains, it is not surrounded by a number of lesser ones, and its tremendous height—--14,440 feet —is appreciated by the eye. It is sublimely grand, and yet gracefully beautiful. Against the blue of a California sky its curved outlines seem to sweep in the perfect segments of a circle from the apex of the cone to the horizon. Far up on its base, the dark green of the timber line is met by the virgin whiteness of Shasta snow, and then on, up and up, far past the summer clouds, points the alabaster pyramid.

Shasta is an extinct volcano, and at Sisson there is, of course, a man to sell you lava, volcano glass and other specimens from the mountain for which you may be suddenly seized with an ungovernable longing. He also had a telescope, mounted on a tripod, and you can ascend Shasta, via the telescope, at a reasonable price and without guides or weariness. This, of course, does not satisfy the cravings of your genuine mountdin-climber, and especial accommodations are made for him. He, with some other enthusiasts, engage guides and horses and start in the afternoon for the timber line, which is reached at night. The party camps here, and in the morning horses are left behind, and, with alpenstocks in hand, it trudges to the top. The summit reached, faces turn black, noses bleed and luncheon is taken. The descent is effected in a novel and rapid manner. The guides provide gunnysacks, and sitting upon one, using your alpenstock both as a rudder and brake, you slide down on the snow. No one has yet been killed at this species of tobogganing, but both the Coroner and undertakers at Sisson still live in hope. Shasta has two large glaciers. The Whiting glacier is visible from the railroad. It looks like a narrow streak of snow, but it is over a* mile in width, and is seamed with great fissures and crevasses. Its natural color is green. At times a natural banner is un; furled from Shasta’s peak. This is called the “snow banner of Shasta.” It only occurs when the gale attacks the summit and blows the snow in great gusts “streaming against the sky,” as the railroad book has it. The banner is seen most frequently in November.