Porcupine Lake and Toad Lake

The Dead Falls Lake Trail is perfect for families, dog, and all adventurers. In the spring and summer, there are gorgeous and abundant wildflowers. There is a perfect lunch spot at Deadfall Lake.  Close to the gargantuan Shasta, Mount Eddy is the highest peak in the Klamath Mountain. Mount Eddy offers staggering scenery, solitude and a variety of wilderness landscapes. The lake is in a bowl su...

Scenes like this are rarely so accessible. Heart Lake is nestled in a bowl below Castle Peak, on the edge of the Castle Crags Wilderness just west of I-5 and the city of Mt. Shasta. The parking lot and trailhead are both located on the shore of Castle Lake, a much larger lake that is stunning in its own right, backed up against a rugged wall of rock. Castle Lake is lovely, but Heart Lake is eve...

Castle Lake in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest is a glacial lake with picturesque views of Mt. Shasta. In the middle of the lake, researchers float a platform in the middle of the lake to study the lake's environment. This is a great destination to swim to.  Nearby Hike:Heart Lake is a great 2-mile roundtrip hike starting from the Castle Lake parking lot.  Season:Castle Lake Road and the p...

The Fen Trail around Kangaroo Lake is a beautiful secluded camping and hiking area in the Klamath Forest of Northern California. It connects to the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), where you can hike up through Oregon and Washington to Canada, or south through to Yosemite.The trailhead starts at the Kangaroo Lake Campground, way up in the mountains. The trail is easy to follow, starting off going up ...

Black Butte is hard to miss from I-5 as it winds past the city of Mount Shasta. This lava dome formed roughly 9,000–10,000 years ago and isn't a cinder cone, though it does look like one. The rock that makes Black Butte was extruded instead of spewed, then broke apart as it cooled. The jumbled results of this volcanic event give the hike its character, never too terribly steep but always intere...

Note: February thru early March are great times to climb it for a winter ascent without snowshoes. If there is no snow seen from the south (e.g. on I-5 heading north to Mount Shasta City), don't be too worried. As long as there is snow on the surrounding peaks (e.g. Trinity Alps) around the same elevation (4,000+ feet), there should still be snow on the northern slopes of Black Butte.Most of th...