Shasta Lake Caverns –  A Treasure Trove of Rock Formations

You’ve seen a lot of rock formations here on Tipsy from the TRIP. From ones crafted by volcanic activity to ones carved by glaciers and ones exposed by wind and water erosion, you’ve seen several. Now you will see rocks weathered by chemicals to form some amazing natural sculptures at Lake Shasta Caverns in Northern California.

Lake Shasta Caverns National Natural Landmark simply known as Shasta Caverns is a wonderland of stalactites and stalagmites, columns, soda straws and flowstones among other formations. There’s so much to see there. And that means I have so much to show you here in this post.

The Shasta Caverns Tour

Our Shasta Caverns tour starts at the gift shop where we show our online-bought tickets and are given a brochure and receipt of the payment. Clutching that in hand we make our way to the back of the gift shop and down the hill to the banks of Shasta Lake.

It is a summer day — the second day of summer to be precise. The water is a shade of green that day (the last time we were at this lake it was blue. But I’ve seen it looking green, prior to that). And the banks are a reddish brown.

Soon a Catamaran pulls to the shore and into it board some 30-odd people who were actually taking some trouble to get to some dark, strange caves up in the mountains. Why trouble — you wonder?

A 15-minute catamaran ride across a part of the largest reservoir in California, a walk up a small hill and then a bus ride up 800 feet and then 200 ft ascent on foot followed by descending those 200 feet via a few flights of steps, a pretty steep path down the mountainside. That’s what you do on this tour. And the best part of it is what comes during the 200ft ascent and before that walk down those steep steps.

We stand in front of what looks like a door rested against the mountainside. Our driver, Shirley leaves the small mountain-side parking lot, and our tour guide Jordan takes the batton. He lists out a set of rules for the tour and it’s like doing an open-sesame. The door is open and we walk into what looks like a tunnel with a few stringed lights leading the way. We come to a wider portion and there before us, in the glow of some soft lighting are some wonders I’d been wanting to see for a long, long time.

Jordan tells us about the natural carbonation that happens in there and points out to the stalactites and stalagmites. He shows us the columns that were born out of the union of the stalactites and stalagmites. He channels our attention to the mostly-hollow soda-straws suspended off those rocky ceilings. Then, he flashes some light on flow-stone and then amuses us with formations that look like spaghetti and bacon.

Then there are the structures that sparkle when light shines on them as they cannot hide the presence of the minerals embedded in them.

Cave Formations of Shasta Caverns

Later, we walk up to more ‘rooms inside the mountain’ – more caves. There are more formations. There’s more water dripping onto our heads. If were were to stay still for a few hundred years, I’m sure we’d turn into foundations for stalagmites. Then there were more wet paths, some puddles (and strong steel railings to keep us from slipping and falling) and more fascinating formations.

In the last room, we look around trying to find some shapes in the formations – you know like elephant heads and dragons and jellyfish and Batman. A photo session later, we are led up more steps only to begin that long walk down the tiny steps making steep flights down the mountain.

Jordan bids goodbye. The bus driver who will take us down the mountain is not Shirley who had brought us up there. But he drives us safely back through those narrow mountain roads and drops us at the souvenir store beside which we had boarded the bus.

A few minutes later, another tour group arrives and we were sure glad we were part of a smaller group. We walk down that hill and into the just-emptied catamaran and Captain Toms gets us safely across the lake before he welcomes an even smaller group into his catamaran. This time it is just 2 families, a group smaller than ours.

Another walk up a hill and tour ends.

We celebrated the sights and the work-out we had managed to catch up on with some ice cream and then left the area.

Lake Shasta Caverns National Natural Landmark. Check. 🙂

Some tips for the trip to Shasta Caverns:

• If you’ve booked your tickets online, make sure you arrive a half hour before your tour time.
• Wear closed comfortable shoes. There’s some walking to do: uphill, downhill, wet cave-paths and down a few steep flights of stairs.
• It is ok to carry a camera and a couple of bottles of water but no backpacks are allowed during the tour
• These caves will not be able to accommodate wheelchairs and strollers. And it might be a bit of a strain to carry kids, especially down those narrow and steep steps inside and outside the caverns. Our 4 year old managed well, so I’d say the tour is great for kids that age and above.
• If you have trouble doing a lot of walking/climbing stairs, you could visit the first couple of caves at the lower level and then exit the caves and wait for the rest of your party to return from the tour. The tour guide will tell you after a point that you are now about to take up the more strenuous part of the tour (they call it the ‘point of no-return or something like that — simply because if you start with that part of the tour, there is no way out in between. You will have to walk all the way up and walk down the steps outside the caverns. And that might be a bit too much for people with bad knees, claustrophobics and people with medical issues that prohibit them from doing steep ascents).
• Make sure you stay with the crowd while you are inside those caverns. You are allowed photography but you might be told that you cannot linger too long in one spot (photography enthusiasts, sorry to let you know that you cannot take a lot of time to compose those perfect shots and wait to calculate those timed-shots). At the end of our tour, however, we stopped at a grand room with grand formations and had some extra time to take some well-thought-out pictures. I guess that would happen only if you’ve made good time with the rest of the tour.
• The whole tour, the bus and catamaran rides and walks included could take you a good two-and-a-half hours. Come prepared to spend around half a day there. (It was quite a hot day and we really needed the ice-cream to cool us off.)
• Parking, restrooms and availablity of snacks here – yes, yes and yes.
• Look up the official website for latest fees and tour timings. There are extra tours during holidays and in the summer. And they are closed two days a year – I believe – for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

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