Mount Shasta
Car Camping
Fowler Campground
Julia luxuriating at the campground
Five and one-half hours of driving 288 miles in our Toyota Prius Prime, and we had certainly had enough driving for one day. The Prime is a great car for long trips as it's comfortable and only consumes one gallon of gas for every 80 miles traveled. However, driving is still driving, and we were more than glad when we arrived at Fowler Campground just off CA-89, south of Mount Shasta before nightfall. It would have been much more difficult to set up camp in the dark, and it certainly got dark very quickly.
Black Butte
Black Butte
The next day we were up and on the road again in search of hikes. Last year we hiked extensively in Shasta National Forest, so we were looking for something new. This led us off the main roads onto many dusty, rocky, unpaved tracks. As the car slowly became covered in dust and we found no sign of published trailheads, we both grew more apprehensive. Eventually, we turned back and returned to paved roads without finding a single trailhead.
We were discouraged but decided to try finding the trailhead for the Black Butte summit hike. Black Butte is a cluster of overlapping dacite lava domes formed into a butte. It is a parasitic satellite cone of Mount Shasta volcano. The lava domes were extruded at the foot of Mount Shasta's cone following its major eruption period about 9,000-10,000 years ago.
We once again left paved roads and spent about an hour bumping around on dirt fire trails to no avail. We couldn't find this trailhead either and returned to camp weary, discouraged, and disheartened.
Panther Meadows
This day we were more determined than ever to find a good hike and drove to the highest point accessible by car on Mount Shasta: Albatross car park. From here we finally found the Panther Meadows trailhead and spent the day hiking the high ground just below the 14,000-foot summit of the majestic, snow-capped Mount Shasta. Along with the towering peak, we were surrounded by Black, Gray, and Green Buttes. The high meadows were alive with tiny desert flowers, dotted with bubbling brooks, and beautiful beyond belief.
This was the hike and the day we wanted. All our trials and tribulations were worth it to experience this grand day of hiking.