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Information About

Mount Shasta





Mountain Information

  Name Mount Shasta
  Photo Mt_Shasta_from_the_northwest-750pxJPG
  Caption Mount Shasta and Shastina from the Butte Valley (North-East)
  Elevation 14,179 ft (4,322 m)
  Range Cascades
  Location California, USA
  Type Composite Volcano
  Topographic Map USGS Mount Shasta
  Age &lt 593 Kyr
  Last Eruption 1786
  First Ascent 1854 by ED Pearce and party
  Easiest Route rock/ice


Mount Shasta, a 14,162-foot (4,322 m) volcano now named Mount McLoughlin in the 1820s, but by the 1840s the name had been transposed to the current Mount Shasta.


GEOLOGY


The mountain consists of four cones buried atop one another. Shastina 12,300 ft (3,749 m) is the most obvious cone and forms a lesser summit. It has a fully intact summit crater which shows that Shastina postdates the last Ice Age . The rest of Shasta's surface is relatively free of glacial Erosion except, paradoxically, for its south side where Sargents Ridge runs parallel to the U-shaped Avalanche Gulch (the largest Glacial Valley on the volcano, although it does not presently have a glacier in it). There are five named, yet tiny, glaciers clustered on the mountain's north side.

There are many buried glacial scars on the mountain that were originally excavated in glacial periods ("ice ages") of the present Wisconsinian Glaciation . Most have since been filled-in with Andesite Lava , Pyroclastic Flow s, and Talus from lava domes.


VOLCANIC HAZARDS

During the last 10,000 years Shasta has erupted an average of every 800 years but in the past 4500 years the volcano has erupted an average of every 600 years. The last significant eruption on Shasta may have occurred 200 years ago.

Mount Shasta can release Volcanic Ash , Pyroclastic Flow s or Dacite and Andesite Lava . Its deposits can be detected under two nearby small towns totalling 20,000 in population. Shasta has an explosive, eruptive history. There are Fumarole s on the mountain, which shows that Shasta is still alive.

The worst case scenario for an eruption is a large pyroclastic flow, such as what occurred at Mount St. Helens . Since there is ice, Lahar s would also result. Ash would probably blow inland, perhaps as far as eastern Nevada . There is a small chance that an eruption could also be bigger resulting in a collapse of the mountain, as happened at Crater Lake in Oregon , but this is of much lower probability.

The US Geologic Survey considers Shasta a volcano with a high probability of erupting again.


RELIGION


, I AM Foundation , Knights Of The White Rose , Radiant School Of The Seekers And Servers , Rosicrucian s, and Understanding, Inc. . Many of these Cult s hold that races of sentient beings, ostensibly superior to Human s, live on Shasta or visit the mountain in UFO s. There are in fact disk or lens-shaped Cloud s that form sometimes over the mountain—a fairly typical meteorological phenomenon over high places on the earth. Lenticular Cloud s are often seen and mistaken for UFOs.

Mt. Shasta is also the site of a Buddhist monastery, Shasta Abbey , founded by Houn Jiyu-Kennett in 1971 .


CULTURAL REFERENCES



REFERENCES



SEE ALSO




EXTERNAL LINKS