Life and all in Redding California
About 25 minutes drive on Interstate 5 north of Redding, you come across a spectacular sight. Granite spires rising through the forest to the west. This is Castle Crags State Park. Pull off the highway for hiking, camping, or just plain gazing upon the beauty of it all.
Technically, these are granite pluons. Molten granite has formed beneath the surface in these shapes, cooling more slowly than the rock around them. The spires are what you can see uncovered as the surface eroded around them. Seeing that, and realizing the time scale involved in their formation, one is left to ponder the insignificance of a single human lifetime in the face of geologic time. Yeah, it’s brief.
Music in the video is an Excerpt of “Eternal Path” by Craig Padilla and Skip Murphy (me) from the CD Phantasma on the Groove Unlimited label. Gobsmacking scenery courtesy of planet earth. It’s Really Redding.
Exactly 6 years ago today, I took this video of the spillway at Shasta Dam near full flow. We have not seen anything remotely near this capacity reached since then. Our Sacramento River watershed has been suffering terrible drought over these last few years. Take a couple minutes to experience the power and majesty of the mighty Sacramento River at the iconic dam during a “normal” year. Sound up:
Will we ever see the likes of this again? Has climate change forever altered the rainfall pattern we came to depend on in California? Serious questions.
Redding is blessed by an abundance of fresh water.
“Freshwater makes up a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. The rest is saline and ocean-based. Even then, just 1 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it trapped in glaciers and snowfields.” National Geographic
“Trapped in glaciers and snowfields” for a while, anyway. The snow you see here gracing Mt Shasta will mostly melt away this summer.
We are having an exceptional rain year. I feared we would see mudslides and worse, similar to what Santa Barbara experienced in the winter after their last big fire. So far, so good.
The floodgates of Shasta Dam are not often opened. Check it out, while you can. It’s ReallyRedding.
Is it Shasta Lake, or Lake Shasta? Anyway, here’s a nice looking commercial map of Lake Shasta. Click to enlarge.
Redding is a resort town, although we often seem to forget that. This map makes it clear. You can get a pdf of it to print at:
http://www.northstate.news/
Northstate news also publishes several local newspapers and magazines to which you may subscribe, including Shasta Lake Bulletin, Intermountain News, and After 5.
A series of views of the Shasta Dam spillway running at high water release I captured on Feb 12 2017. This water flows into the Sacramento River. I believe the flow was around 70,000 cubic feet per second at this point.
I think this was about the same time that state officials became seriously concerned about the Oroville Dam. Shasta looks solid, though. Click to enlarge:
A TV station in Medford Oregon called and asked permission to use my footage of the Shasta Dam spillway, which I found to be gratifying. I asked them to attribute it to Really Redding.
Love this photo by Tommy Higgins as seen on Facebook. Nice work! Silverthorn Resort posted it. Click to slightly enlarge.
The houseboat scene on Lake Shasta is just one of the things that makes our region so special. Warm summer nights on the lake.
Click on the image and Like Silverthorn’s FB page. The lake will drop this year, but it is still a huge body of water. A huge body of fun.
Starry skies on Lake Shasta. It’s Really Redding.
Here’s a video of local volunteers in yellow t-shirts spelling out “75” from atop Shasta Dam to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the structure.
It seems a good time was had by all. If you’re curious to see what it looked like from that helicopter, there’s a link here:
Strolled about Shasta Dam with a few others yesterday evening, and took these interesting images illuminated by the light of the Harvest Moon.
Stone. Water. Sky. Moon. Life. It’s Really Redding.
