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| rather than bombard your in-box with photos, here's a little website of my trip to... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mt Shasta! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first 550 miles or so of the drive looked like this. Literally! I took a picture every 100 miles, but why show you all of them...trust me on this | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The landscape changed pretty dramatically once I got past Redding. And then I climbed up the range and found myself in this beautiful place. Here's two shots of Mt Shasta and Shastina. Shasta's a "stratovolcano" and has sulfur hot springs near its top. No, I didn't climb it - it's 14,000'+ in elevation and requires crampons and other ice climbing equipment. I did drive up to about 7,000' and then poked around in the snow. OK, I rolled around in the snow, truth be told. Nearby is a "plug-dome" volcano, Black Butte, that was 6,000'+ in elevation. You can see it on the left of the top photo. I did hike this one, almost to the top(don't worry, I didn't start at sea level!). It looked like a big cone-shaped pile of red crumbled rock. |
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| Above, the McCloud River, a beautiful, intense waterway a short distance from Shasta. The streamside trail had many interesting plants and vistas. Best was the mist from the waterfall. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| and more more! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Toney Anaya, in one of his New Mexico novels, writes of a legend of the Golden Trout. I thought he was making that up, but I guess they do happen. At right are some genetic mutants of already arguably mutated Rainbow trout, because they're from the State Fish Hatchery. For those of you who aren't into salmonids, there's a lot of debate about the wisdom of introducing hatchery fish into our wild streams because of the effect they have on genetics, biodiversity, and the health of the wild fish. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Basically, there've been cases where entire reaches of fish have been wiped out due to introduction of these little guys. I think these fish are going to recreational lakes, and don't know what the impacts are, however. Hopefully one of you will tell me! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||