Castle Crags Trip Report

“So, I finally got to go on a trip with some friends that had been talking about it for a few months without any real planning. I told them a couple of weeks ago that I was going to Castle Crags wilderness up near Shasta over the president's day weekend, and they all agreed to go.

These people are:

Rich - a fairly experienced backpacker who has really only gone during the summer months.

Leslie - Rich's girlfriend, and something of an enigma to me. A very quiet, somewhat shy and reserved type. She's been along with Rich a few times on trips during the summer.

Eric - A loud, usually funny, city-type from New Jersey. He has lived in California for a few months, and told me before the trip, "I HAVE been camping before, you know." :)

I sent everyone a list of the things they would need (this was aimed mainly at Eric) for the trip two weeks before. I found out a week before that Eric had purchased NEW HIKING BOOTS for the trip. :) I sent a supplementary email about backpacker's etiquette and breaking in new boots.

I picked everyone up at 6:00am on Saturday morning, we got packed and were off by 6:30. We stopeed for gas and breakfast in Redding and made the trailhead by 9:30.

It was raining the whole way up, and didn't look like it would stop. We shouldered our packs, set the waypoints on the GPS and were off!

We took the Dog trail up to the PCT, where we headed into the wilderness for 6 miles before Eric's blisters made us stop. The Dog trail to the PCT is fairly technical. It was the first time I have been up that particular trail, and most of it has been washed out, so the whole trail is just a group of head-sized, jagged rocks, loosly arranged. The incline was pretty steep as well, gaining about 800 feet over the course of .7 of a mile.

Once we made the PCT, things evened out a bit, but the rain didn't let up at all. If anything, it came harder.

Leslie, it turns out, is a very slow hiker, which is fine. She's very steady in her pace. She also is very skittish about stream crossings, and we all had to stop at each stream to let her catch up, and to help her across. So the pace of the hiking was pretty leisurely to me.

Eric started mumbling things about not having "trained hard enough for this", about three miles in. :)

I resisted reminding him that he HAD camped before.

Anyway, when we stopped, Rich and I were able to find enough dry firewood to get a fire started in the rain, and then we left Eric in charge of the fire and did a short day hike a little further down the trail. When we got back, we had to start the fire again. :)

We had a nice dinner of Summer sausage, mushroom cous-cous, cheese mashed potatoes and planned, but everyone decided that cooking was a little too much truoble, so we just ate the summer sausage and shared some snacks.

After that, we broke out the whiskey, talked a bit in the rain around the fire and turned in.

The rain turned to snow overnight and froze everything solid that was wet. The snow falling off the tree that we were camped under kept hitting the tent and waking me, but it was a nice night, nonetheless.

The next day, we taped Eric's feet for him while he told us about being up half the night scared about the bear in camp... The snow had spooked him :) We reassured him and off we went in the snow. Beautiful area up there.

We made good time during the day, and were close to the circuit we were going to make so we finished the hike out and made the car before sundown.

All in all, a good time. The weather could not have been any worse, though! Still, the snow sure was pretty...

Pictures”

“Nice pics and very nice trip report! The pines are so green and that rainbow very nice!!!”

“Thanks! That rainbow was on the way out, of course.”

“Very cool pics!! I love rainbows!!”

“Looks like a good trip! I've driven by the crags on the way to shasta but never explored them. the elevation is pretty low, no?

thanks for sharing!”

“Yeah, the elevation never got over 4500 feet. I would have liked to go to lassen or somewhere higher, but I didn't want to stress the newbie out too much.”

“Seems as though he was stressed enough as it was:) Ahhhh, newbies...”

“LOL! Nice trip report. This erik guy sounds like me my first few times backpacking lol.”