This image of the snowpack atop Mount Shasta comes courtesy my friends over at Shasta Mountain Guides, who do this kind of batshit-crazy stuff pretty much every day. It's all the more amazing when you consider the following: there are no trout up there.



(It's OK to pity the troutless, though perhaps not to their tanned, extremely fit faces.)

That's what a near-normal snowpack looks like (at around 12,000'), and if the perspective is confusing you, then here's a tip -- that's nearly straight down.

Most of this snow will be gone by mid-August, and a lot of it will end up in the Upper Sacramento River, making it difficult for you drag your sorry, non-mountain-climbing butt across the river.

Clearly, this fitness thing is relative.

As predicted in advance of Saturday's season opener, temperatures are coming down and the flows are falling (slightly: Upper Sac is under 4,000 cfs; Ah-Di-Nah is under 400 cfs).

Singlebarbed -- not content to wait for the rest of us -- tried to sink himself deep in the ooze of one of his brownlines. We wish him well though we really wish we'd been there with a video camera.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.