While i was staying in Redding Ca, My team and I were only 30 minutes from the southern part of Shasta. A friend and I wanted to take a weekend to find a trail to explore through the forrest. It seems like a good idea at first, but just in the nature of California and Oregon, Every trail we across was closed of and gated, reserved for logging or private land. Finally I found a bridge that seemed to lead into some fire break trails in the forrest. These turned out to be the trail that would take us all around the forrest.
The fascinating thing about fire break roads, is that they are designed to be a gap of trees, so that if a fire burns through the forrest, It would make it difficult for the flames to leap across road. I makes a lot of sense on that practical sense, but it also makes for fun exploring. The thing we didnt know while going into these trails, is that they are just an endless maze of dead ends and fallen trees. It was a fun challenge for us to clear off the paths and search for a trail that goes somewhere, but it took us an hour and a half to simply find a road that goes somewhere. Here are the photos of these endless paths of red sand and fallen trees.
We found a trail that dives into the depths of the dense northern Californian forest of Shasta. This trail was exciting because it seemed to have a promising end point, and it was beautifully overgrown. The grass over growing the trail gave a sense of mystery to where we were treking, and the tree roots and ferns encroaching onto the sidelines of the trail left some pin striping on our paint. I was grateful to enjoy the beauty of this magnificent forest.
Our timing to round the corner to the summit of the trail, was perfect. Just in time to see the sun decend on the mountains across the valley, we took a few minutes to stretch our legs and pop the lens cap off for a couple photos. This time at the top was rushed by the hustle of the setting sun. Dark started to creep through the trees and we knew we had to get back to the river where we began. As we approached the river to where the bridge casts its long legs over, our curiousity was peaked by the discovery of a rugged path down to the waters edge. We knew now, that we'd have to engage 4Lo to dance over two staggered boulders on the trail. A thick stream of used motor oil told of an unfortunate victim of a bad line. This made us nervous to engage in this trail but the photo opportunity of our headlights on the water just couldnt be left without exploration.
run down to the river!
Here's a collection of my favorite photos from the trip. This journey was my first experience shooting with this Sony A7 III, testing mirrorless cameras to see how they perform in low lighting. Let me tell you, my photographic life is changed through this camera.
