On the northern side of the Crag the country dropped abruptly into Shasta Valley. They were close to Mount Shasta by this time, and although flying along at about eight thousand feet, they had to look up into the air to see the snow cap of that peak, which was some fourteen thousand feet above sea level. The sides of the mountain were covered with trees for the first five or six thousand feet above the floor of the valley, but beyond that the timber thinned out until the mountain was bare for the last three or four thousand feet.