shasta lake

My husband and I and our neighbors all spent 2-3 weeks each summer at Shasta. We rented a houseboat, took our own boat and jet skis and had a ball. Even though the lake was down quite a bit at times over the years, we always had a wonderful time and there was always wild life around. My husband is now deceased but I will be going down this year 2015, with my son and my niece and her fam. We made so many good memories and there are more yet to be made.Maggi A.

Shasta lake is at an historic low water level, which has prompted the building of new roads to the marinas and the closing of most boat ramps. I would love to visit this lake when it is back up to capacity, but in the meantime, the beauty of the hundred-foot banks and exposed dam building structures are sights to behold all their own. California has always experienced intermittent droughts, so this one will recede as have all those before it.

Love the lake and have spent many years enjoying all of it. If your on a boat, patio boat or house boat you'll enjoy your time. Many miles of water to see no matter if your just cruising, skiing, on a seado, floating in the water or fishing. Always a great time. You can also go see Lake Shasta Caverna which is an experience you'll never forget.

Very beautiful lake and great views from the mountain. Make sure to explore the entire area when visiting, it's breath-taking and you'll find many great hidden spots with wonderful views and offering great photo opportunities.

With a heavy heart I write this review, this once beautiful lake has now been reduce to a few isolated areas of water , far below it's normal depth due to drought and Man's poor management of the Earth's most precious resource squandered away by big corporations such as Walmart that still continues to waste precious water irrigating the property around their stores as seen in local Anderson. As I drove above this once special attraction I cried tears of anguish at the gaping wholes that once held water for all to enjoy now gone !

I've always wanted to see the caverns at Lake Shasta, hearing of a awe inspiring cavern over a million yrs old! We spent our last day there exploring this amazing cave! We were there in what i thought was off time. Being the first week in Sept. However, our tour was first one of the day and it was full.(mostly with Chinese tour group) As we walked down to the lake which is over 150 ft below the norm, which turned into only over 1/2 mile walk. BUT,it was hot, dusty & dirty and my first thought was, man I hope we don't have to walk back up this hill? We boarded the ferry to shuttle us across the inlet to the other side of the lake. We were greeted by a Friendly staff and thankfully a bus awaited our 2 mile trek UP hill the the entrance of the caverns. THe view was amazing! if faint of heart sit on Left side of bus so you dont' have to look down the 1,000 ft drop off to the lake on way up.Upon entering the cavern one of the gals from the group immediately got clausterphobic and could not proceed inside, where you had to start the ascent up the stairs. as we were at the back of the line I found it assuring that should i need, i could turn around easily & head out as Im a bit overwhelmed in tight places myself. It was cool and lit up enough so that i was not bothered. The tour guide and the caverns themself were AWESOME! I learned alot and now can remember the difference between stalagmites and tites? The last and largest cave was found to be OVER a million and a half yrs OLD! There is some walking involved in the cave and too the ferry so keep that in mind but I can highly recommend this tour. (not the Chinese tour group) LOL>

I know it's September and your water has been supplying downstream farms and communities. But if this isn't a reason for people to think about serious water conservation then i'm beside myself. As I post this on October 3, your water level has dropped almost 14 feet since the day I took these pictures.Agriculture we need, watering lawns is something of a days gone by era and faux grass should be commonplace. I will only say that washing cars is somewhat of a necessity to keep fuel efficiency.I long to see you full once again as I remember in my early 20's

The water was so blue and clean. Saw a few boats and if anyone knows what a sea breacher is, I saw that too.

This was a very strange experience. We stayed in the state park Lakeshore East. We booked a Yurt at great expense $70 a night, thinking it would be a great change from setting up a tent that night. When we arrived it was after dinner hour. We drove through the park looking for our yurt. Found the yurt we had booked, but there wasn't a soul around apart from a small group camping quite a ways down from us. We wondered if the place had been evacuated??? We went to get in to the yurt but there was a key code to punch in. I hadn't been given a code!!! so we drove around looking for a park ranger....there wasn't one to be found!!! so no code and it was getting dark and we were in the middle of nowhere! my husband went up to the yurt and finally managed to crack the code, just a lucky guess! so we had a place to sleep. After we dragged all our gear in and went to bed, 3 times that night an INCREDIBLY LOUD train went by. Sounded like it was literally going to run into the yurt. It woke us up everytime it went past, and it was very creepy how loud it was and really freaked us out. We woke up the next morning exhausted from lack of sleep and we couldnt get out of there fast enough. Came home from our road trip only to find a call from the park on our machine with the code...grrrr....why wouldn't they have sent an email??? they would have had that from us when we booked. Won't be back - ever!

We rented a. Boat for a week the positives were even though water as low and the surrounding mountain level was exposed it was still picturesque and the lake was refreshing the boat staff was super helpful and pleasant lots of places to park the house boat there were Very few people on the lake which made for a peaceful trip overall a nice place to vacation oh also come fully stocked the closest Walmart/costco is thirty min away quite a trip

we road the Sacramento Rail Trail from Shasta Lake to Redding. we even road across the dam. the hill down to start of trail is pretty steep but we were able to ride back up at end of ride and worth it to ride bikes across the dam. porta potty along the way, about half way. starts off very flat, last 8 miles is like roller coaster. fun, fun ride

the water temperature was just right, kids spent a lot of time swimming in the lake. my younger daughter has sensitive skin, she can't swim in a public pool. in Lake Shasta that was not a problem, she had a great time in the water. there are so many inlets to explore, every night we docked in a different place. Also visited Shasta Dam and Shasta Cavern. we rented an older model houseboat, no TV, no computer, no internet. all 4 kids (two teenagers) actually enjoyed the whole week. for the adults, it was much appreciated downtime.

As the title says, when it's full it's gorgeous. As the summer progresses though you will see more of what we locals call the bathtub ring. That's the exposed portion of the lake bottom. Right now, in October, it's down 130 feet which is exceptionally low. But, even when it's down it's one of our favorite places to go. We keep our boat moored there from April until October which says something for our opinion of the lake even in its currently depleted condition.

Went there while we were visiting our daughter! The views of Mount Shasta are spectacular! It's a great place to walk and look at the dam.

My wife and I and three other couples rented the Corinthian houseboat through Jones Resort for four nights on Lake Shasta. Getting to the resort was a bit difficult as the demarkation point had changed because of the water level. We think the resort could have let us all know of this change. But they didn't and we finally all arrived. Getting us to our boat was a bit delayed as well and could have been handled better. But we finally made it on the boat. We all had a glorious time on the water which made us forget about the start. We would definitely recommend such a vacation if you've never done it before.