Jeff and I visited Castle Lake on our way up to Oregon to view the Solar Eclipse in totality on a week long camping trip in our camper/truck with our dogs, Summer and Skye. Castle Lake has very crystal clear water, however very small at only 47 acres and located at an elevation of 6,050. This is a very beautiful lake located just southwest of the town of Lake Shasta City in northern California at the southwest base of Mount Shasta off of Interstate 5. Castle Lake is a alpine lake and lots of historical data has been studied by the University of Davis. This Lake has a lot of history and I have listed some of the information on this special lake below.
The lake is usually reached by driving along an approximately 7 mile road from Lake Siskiyou. About 3 miles from the lake, along this road, are Ney Springs and Faery Falls. Ney Springs is the site of the historic Ney Springs Resort, a late 19th-century resort based on the mineral springs there; this resort was one of a number of such popular resorts in Siskiyou County, including Upper Soda Springs, and Shasta Springs. A short hiking trail leads to nearby Faery Falls, where Ney Springs Creek falls nearly 60 feet down a granite cliff face, forming a clear pool at the bottom.
About one-quarter mile north of Castle Lake is a campground with 6 first-come, first-served campsites. At the lake itself, fishing and picnicking, as well as viewing the local plant life, wildlife and scenery, are common activities. The lake waters can be cool, so swimming is generally limited to summer months. Kayaking, rowboating and rafting are available on the lake. In the winter, in addition to cross-country skiing and snow-shoeing along the trails in the area, the lake will ice over and ice fishing is a common activity.
From the parking area at the lake, a half-mile (1 km) trail winds along the northern and western shore of the lake, ending at the granite face of the headwall, which forms the southern shore. Along the way, hikers will pass the Castle Lake Limnological Research Station.
Following the eastern shore, the Little Castle Lake Trail leaves the parking area, and then climbs the adjoining ridge; about 1 mile along this trail is Little Castle Lake, a small glacial tarn reached by passing through meadows of wild flowers in the early summer. Little Castle Lake is within the Castle Crags Wilderness Area. Heart Lake, another small tarn, located above the headwall of Castle Lake, may also be reached via an informal cut-off from the Little Castle Lake Trail.
At this point, the well-known Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail is one-half mile away, just over the Trinity Divide. The Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail stretches from Mexico to Canada, following the highest portion of the Sierra Nevada, Klamath Mountains, and Cascade Range and paralleling the Pacific Ocean by 100 to 150 miles.
The Little Castle Lake Trail continues on to Mt. Bradley, a locally prominent mountain with views of Mount Shasta, overlooking Dunsmuir, California and the canyon of the Upper Sacramento River. Along the way, the trail joins with a network of connections leading into Castle Crags State Park.
The lake's origins date to the Pleistocene Era (more than 10,000 years ago) when a glacier carved a basin in the location of the current lake. During that era, much of North America was glaciated. Castle Lake is a typical glacier cirque lake (or tarn), reaching depths of up to 110 feet near the southern, granitic part of the lakeshore (the cirque face). There is a terminal moraine of boulders and gravel forming a natural dam opposite the cirque face along the northeastern shore of the lake, where there is an outlet, and the lake is 10 to 15 feet deep.
The cirque where Castle Lake is found is a classic Northern Hemisphere cirque. The cirque headwall (the highest part of the mountain where the glacier began to form) was in the south or southwest, and the part of the mountain that sloped downward to the northeast was away from the prevailing winds. The resulting shaded area was sheltered from direct sun, and from the evaporating effects of wind. These conditions encouraged snow which had fallen in the winter to remain throughout the summer and fall, creating a year-round snow pack which grew deeper each year.
During initial glacial formation, snow changed into glacial ice as this year-round snow pack increased and deepened. The process of nivation followed (where a hollow in a slope was enlarged by freeze-thaw weathering and glacial erosion). As the hollow enlarged and filled with snow and ice, rock debris (or till) contained within the glacial ice also began to abrade the bedrock surface – as the glacial ice moved down the slope, it had a "sandpaper effect" on the bedrock which it scraped.
Eventually the hollow took the shape of a large bowl in the side of the mountain, with the headwall being weathered by constant freezing and thawing, and eroded by plucking. The basin became deeper (especially at the base of the headwall) as it continued to be eroded by abrasion. When the current warming period began, the glacier retreated and finally melted completely. It left behind a bowl shape, deepest at the base of the headwall where the glacial ice had been the deepest and most abrasive. The bowl shape extended to its northeast edge, where there was a terminal moraine of smaller rocks and debris which had been deposited by the glacier. When the bowl-shaped crater filled with water, this terminal moraine acted as a natural dam, helping to contain the water in the newly formed cirque lake.
Castle Lake was within the range of the Okwanuchu tribe, one of a number of small Shastan-speaking tribes of Native Americans who were closely related to the adjacent larger Shasta tribe. The Okwanuchu occupied territory near Mount Shasta, including the nearby present-day cities of Mount Shasta and Dunsmuir, California, and the upper Sacramento River canyon (among other areas). The Okwanuchu were speakers of the older Hokan-speaking family of languages, with archaeological sites associated with their range dating back more than 5000 years. However, members of a tribe of the Penutian-speaking family of languages, the Wintu, who arrived in central Northern California about 1200 years ago, were out-competing their Hokan-language family neighbors, and were expanding Wintu territory. It is unclear at the time of first contact with non-Native Americans in the 1820s which tribe was living nearest to Castle Lake. Little or no information is available about Native American use or beliefs regarding Castle Lake; for example, Castle Lake is not mentioned in a published collection of Wintu tales and legends.
The first non-Native Americans to pass through the area of Castle Lake were hunters and trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, who began to come down the Siskiyou Trail from present-day Washington into Mexican-controlled California, in the late 1820s and early 1830s, in search of beaver and other pelt-bearing animals. At about this same time, Ewing Young led the first group of Americans up the Siskiyou Trail, passing near Castle Lake. In 1841, an overland party of the United States Exploring Expedition, the first cartographers and scientists came through the area. Following the annexation of California by the United States in 1848 as a result of the Mexican-American War, Castle Lake came under the control of the U.S. Federal Government as public land.
In 1855, an area near Castle Lake, now known as Battle Rock, was the site of a battle between Native Americans and California Gold Rush-era settlers. The poet Joaquin Miller wrote a first-hand account of this battle, The Battle of Castle Crags, in which Miller took part in the fight, and received an arrow wound through the cheek and jaw. This battle was reportedly the last battle between Native Americans and settlers in which the Native Americans fought exclusively with bow and arrow.
With the development, first, of the U.S. "Forest Reserve" system in the late 19th century, and then the organization of the U.S. National Forests in the early 20th century, Castle Lake came under the stewardship of the U.S. Forest Service. The association between U.C. Davis and Castle Lake began in 1957, with the first extensive study done of the lake, followed by the construction of the "Castle Lake Limnological Research Station".
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