Mount Shasta
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40 free Mount Shasta trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mount Shasta rises more than 14,000 feet above far northern California, a snow-covered volcano that can be seen from well over a hundred miles away. It is also one of the most storied mountains in the United States, a place where geology, exploration history and some very strange legends meet. This quiz turns the best Mount Shasta fun facts into 40 questions. You will meet the glaciers that surprised scientists, the eruptions and collapses that shaped the peak, the explorers and surveyors who climbed it, the towns and springs at its foot, and the tales of secret cities, strange lights and spiritual gatherings that keep visitors coming. It suits hikers and skiers planning a trip, road-trippers on Interstate 5, students of volcanoes, and anyone who likes a mountain with a good story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with facts worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Survivors of which lost continent are said to live in a hidden city inside Mount Shasta?
Lemuria
Lemuria is the sunken land of the tale, which grew from an offhand 1880s mention and was cemented by a 1931 book written under a pseudonym.
Q 02Mount Shasta lies outside Shasta County; which county, with its seat at Yreka, contains the peak?
Siskiyou
Siskiyou County, which runs along the Oregon border, counts the volcano as its highest point.
Q 03Shasta is the Cascade Range's second-highest peak, behind which volcano that towers over Washington state?
Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier rises to 14,406 feet and is also the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States.
Q 04Which naturalist survived an overnight blizzard on Mount Shasta by lying in hot sulfur springs near the summit?
John Muir
John Muir wrote a dramatic popular article about the ordeal in 1877, and the mountain's easiest climbing route still carries his name.
Q 05Which creature of cryptozoology has reported sightings on Mount Shasta, alongside the UFO and hidden-city tales?
Bigfoot
Bigfoot reports join a crowded local folklore that also features interdimensional beings and visiting motherships.
Q 06In Klamath legend, Skell stood on Mount Shasta to fight Llao, whose smashed mountain holds which Oregon body of water?
Crater Lake
Crater Lake fills the caldera left when Mount Mazama collapsed, and the legend's fire and falling rock probably recall real eruptions.
Q 07In February 1959, Mount Shasta Ski Bowl set the US record, 15.75 feet, for snowfall from a single what?
Storm
One storm, lasting from February 13 to 19, buried the old ski area high on the volcano's southern flank.
Q 08Which town near Mount Shasta is named for a lumber mill founder who found its strong winds helped dry timber?
Weed
Weed honours Abner Weed, who in 1897 paid $400 for a local mill and 280 acres of land.
Q 09A 2002 survey of Mount Shasta's glaciers, the first detailed one in 50 years, found they had done what since 1951?
Grown larger
They had grown larger because heavier snowfall outpaced a two-to-three-degree warming, and the Hotlum Glacier nearly doubled in size.
Q 10When William Brewer climbed Mount Shasta in the early 1860s, the peak was wrongly believed to hold which title?
Tallest US mountain
Tallest US mountain was the reputation it carried in 1862, yet the volcano is now ranked only the fifth-highest peak in California.
Q 11Mount Shasta, built from four overlapping cones, is the Cascade arc's most voluminous example of which type of volcano?
Stratovolcano
Stratovolcano is the class, and at roughly 85 cubic miles the mountain outbulks every other one in the arc, though it is not the tallest.
Q 12Which plant breeder named his hybrid daisy after Mount Shasta because its petals were the colour of snow?
Luther Burbank
Luther Burbank bred the Shasta daisy by crossing species from three continents, and it remains a favourite garden plant.
Q 13Shasta, the soda brand named for Mount Shasta and its springs, launched which flavor as its first soft drink in 1931?
Ginger ale
Q 21Which cluster of dacite lava domes, a satellite of Mount Shasta, rises directly beside Interstate 5's northbound lanes?
Black Butte
Black Butte once carried a fire lookout on its summit, and a 2.5-mile trail still climbs to the concrete foundation left behind.
Q 22Which of Mount Shasta's glaciers is the longest glacier in California?
Whitney
Whitney Glacier, named for state geologist Josiah Whitney, is also California's only valley glacier and was the first glacier confirmed in the United States.
Q 23Which saucer-shaped cloud type, said in Mount Shasta legend to hide visiting motherships, is often mistaken for a UFO?
Lenticular
Lenticular clouds hang stationary while the wind blows through them, forming where moist, stable air flows over a mountain.
Ginger ale arrived 42 years after the company began in 1889 as a bottler of mineral water, shipped out in glass-lined railroad cars.
Q 14Which river, the largest in California, begins near Mount Shasta and runs some 400 miles toward San Francisco Bay?
Sacramento
Sacramento River headwaters gather where three forks meet close to the city of Mount Shasta, the final community up the river.
Q 15Mount Shasta and White Mountain Peak are California's only two 14,000-foot summits outside which mountain range?
Sierra Nevada
Sierra Nevada summits make up the rest of the state's fourteeners, leaving Mount Shasta alone in the Cascades and White Mountain Peak in the Great Basin.
Q 16Which Cascade volcano, about 80 miles south of Mount Shasta, erupted explosively in May 1915?
Lassen Peak
Lassen Peak is the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range, and its 1915 blast spread ash as far as 280 miles to the east.
Q 17Shasta Abbey, founded near Mount Shasta by British-born Jiyu-Kennett, trains monks in which religion?
Buddhism
Buddhism at the abbey follows the Soto Zen tradition, and its resident monks, both men and women, are vegetarian and celibate.
Q 18What destroyed the main chairlift of Mount Shasta's original Ski Bowl in January 1978, closing the resort for good?
An avalanche
An avalanche finished off the high-altitude resort, and no lifts ran on the mountain again until a new ski park opened lower down in 1985.
Q 19The collapse of an older Mount Shasta, at least 300,000 years ago, spawned one of Earth's biggest known what?
Landslides
Landslides rarely come bigger: the debris covered more than 170 square miles of Shasta Valley, where the Shasta River now cuts through it.
Q 20Which satellite cone on Mount Shasta's western flank would rank among the Cascades' highest volcanoes on its own?
Shastina
Shastina tops 12,300 feet, taller than Mount Adams, and Diller Canyon, the cleft down its side, is by far the largest such feature on any Cascade volcano.
Q 24What name do believers give the hidden city of advanced beings said to lie beneath Mount Shasta?
Telos
Telos is the usual name, and a 1905 book pictured the mountain's secret dwellers in tunnels with jewelled walls and fur-carpeted floors.
Q 25Which federal designation has Mount Shasta, a volcano inside a forest rather than a park, held since December 1976?
National Natural Landmark
National Natural Landmark status recognises the best examples of geological and biological features, and the National Park Service runs the programme.
Q 26Which granite spires, protected as a state park beside Interstate 5, rise south of Mount Shasta near Dunsmuir?
Castle Crags
Castle Crags emerged when Ice Age glaciers stripped softer rock from the granite, and an 1855 battle between gold miners and Native people was fought there.
Q 27Pluto's Cave, a 190,000-year-old cavern on Mount Shasta's northern outskirts, is what kind of volcanic feature?
Lava tube
Lava tube ceilings are only a few metres thick and usually collapse quickly, but the semi-arid climate here has slowed the erosion.
Q 28On a clear winter day, Mount Shasta can be seen from the floor of which lowland, 140 miles to the south?
Central Valley
Central Valley views are possible because the volcano rises abruptly, towering almost 10,000 feet above its surroundings.
Q 29Immigrants from which country settled around Mount Shasta in the early 1900s, working in the timber mills?
Italy
Italy sent so many mill workers and stonemasons that they established a strong Catholic presence in the towns around the mountain.
Q 30Which Native people of the McCloud River area still practise rituals on Mount Shasta, a mountain sacred to them?
Wintu
Wintu ceremonies continue on the slopes, while Klamath stories make the summit the home of the sky spirit Skell.