Leon Turnbull Photography

Unless you have been living under a rock lately or in some far-off corner of the planet, I am sure you have heard about all the forest fires burning in California. There are currently over 1000 active fires across the state, most of them caused by lightning coupled with the unusually dry spring we have had. All these fires have caused a tremendous amount of smoke to just sit over the Sacramento Valley, which stretches hundreds of miles from south of Sacramento up past Redding in the north end of the state. I live in the Sacramento area, and I thought it was very bad here (and it was), but as I drove up north this past weekend, I found it much worse up there. Redding in particular was especially bad, far worse than down here in Sacramento. Visibility there was probably less than a mile. It is much better now that the wind has finally blown much of the smoke out of the valley, but it was quite bad this past weekend.

My friend Brian and I thought about going on a big hike this past weekend up north, but a combination of the smoke and heat put a damper into our hiking plans. I just had no energy to do any kind of serious hiking. Brian, either intentionally, or perhaps subconsciously, or maybe just cuz he had no sleep the previous night, forgot his hiking boots anyway. Some of the highways in the area were also closed as well so that limited our options. Our idea was to travel north up towards Mt. Shasta, in an attempt to escape the smoke. It is only an hour drive north of Redding, and I had not much hope of getting out of the smoke. I didn’t think Shasta would even be visible at all. But alas, our journey was not in vain. It was clearer up there. Shasta was indeed visible. And the bit of haze and smoke that was in the air created some amazing colour as the sun rose above the horizon. We climbed up above Castle Lake, a short 1 mile hike, which provided an amazing sunrise view of the lake with Mt. Shasta in the background, not to mention some incredible red and pink colour in the sky thanks to the smoke. I guess I would have to say it was worth the drive up there from Redding after all.