Sunday, January 28, 2024

It's presently 64 degrees in Mt. Shasta which is pretty unheard of for this time of year

Yesterday I drove to Castle Lake which is at 6000 feet so I could snowshoe there with a friend through the snow. 

However, it was raining at 6000 feet and not quite cold enough to snow. So, really miserable weather because being in the snow is often okay because you don't get that wet or cold. But, freezing rain is a problem almost always. So, we waited in the car for the rain to let up but it never did.

So, we just walked over to the lake and took pictures of the melting ice from all the rain and higher temperatures and called it a day. Though it is beautiful up there and likely sunny today the ice on Castle lake is no longer safe to go out on and it's only late January 2024.

And the nights are only going to go down to 43 degrees the next three days too which is going to cause more snow to melt but likely not as much as the rain caused to melt the last couple of days. I would say the snow coming down level has moved up to 7000 to 8000 feet or higher at these temperatures. There should be more rain (or snow) on the mountain this Wednesday. 

However, I think it was 2010 or 2012 or something like that when Castle Lake never froze over at all. Ever since then I find I cannot really trust the ice which used to get 3 to 6 feet deep and skiing over the ice was a yearly event at 6000 feet over to the waterfalls on the other side of the lake.

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