Shasta Alpine Hut
The Sierra Club owns a large chunk of land (720 acres) on Mount Shasta that contains the Shasta Alpine Hut. The Shasta Alpine Hut (Formally Horse Camp Hut). This is my second season working up at the Shasta Alpine Hut. I spend my time hiking around the alpine, doing art, nature journaling, meditating, reading about alpine ecology, managing the hut, talking to tourists, working on trails, and cleaning the bathrooms. This year Caryn and I stayed up at the campsites around the hut. I collected hundreds of nature observations as part of my DIY masters in Alpine Ecology. I will publish them along with illustrations and nature comics next year, but until then here are few pages that are finished.
Wilkin’s Harebell is a rare plant only found in ~20 locations in California, many of those sites are located on Mount Shasta. There is a sub-population of these plants just up from the Alpine Hut that I visit on a regular basis during my shifts.
I have a sit-spot in a grove of White Bark Pines where I go to nearly every time I am up at the Alpine Hut. There is a resident population of Clark’s Nutcrackers that have gotten used to me being there. I made many, many observations near and far of these wonderful corvids. Clark’s Nutcrackers are really smart and disperse the seeds of Whitebark Pine all over the mountain. Enjoy the comic!