It is from this point that tourists ascend the mountain.
You can hire horses, guides, and a camp outfit here, and the adventure requires three days.

You ride up to the snow-line the first day, ascend to the top the following morning, descend to your camp in the afternoon, and return to the valley on the third day.

Mount Shasta has a glacier, almost, but not quite, the only one, I believe, within the limits of the United States.

The mountain is an extinct volcano.

Its summit is composed of lava, and if your eye is familiar with the peculiar shape of volcanic peaks, you can easily trace the now broken lines of this old crater as you view the mountain from the Shasta plain on the north.
There are many extremely pretty valleys scattered through these mountains, and these are used by small farmers, and by sheep and cattle owners who in the winter take their stock into the lower valleys, but ascend into the mountains in May, and remain until October.