Shasta

Once you arrive, stop at either the Weaverville or Shasta Lake Ranger Stations to grab a free but required wilderness permit.

Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the agency, was trying to track down one of them — the freshly minted Ashpan pack that consists of at least two wolves roaming eastern Shasta County.

To the north, from the Shasta Lake area to the Sacramento Valley, “dangerously hot conditions” are expected, with temperatures from 99 to 107 degrees, according to the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office.

The low-flying, day-biting mosquitoes are present in more than a third of California’s counties, including Shasta County in the far north.

Fed from glaciers on Mount Shasta’s majestic slopes, Mossbrae Falls cascades out of lava tubes and down mossy cliffs into the Sacramento River in ethereal curtains of mist, sending rainbows dancing in all directions.