Ranch news
Welcome, and a warm hello from the new stewards of Mount Shasta Ranch Bed & Breakfast: the Kuksin family and the Shastara LLC team.
As of summer 2026, the ranch is under new ownership. First, a promise: the unhurried, welcoming hospitality the ranch is known for isn't going anywhere. The rooms, the mountain, the quiet mornings are all staying. We see ourselves as caretakers of something that was here long before us, and our first job is to protect it.
A few words about the host you'll meet. I'm Alexey Kuksin, and I'm the one who'll welcome you to the ranch. My role here is simple and dear to me: to make every guest feel at home, and to keep the heritage and spirit of Mount Shasta Ranch alive for the friends and guests who return season after season. I first came to Mount Shasta in 2011 and fell for the place on that very first visit. I've been back through every season since, so stewarding the ranch feels less like arriving somewhere new than like finally staying. I was born in the country of Georgia, studied cybernetics, and spent my career across telecommunications, healthcare, and finance, while hospitality stayed a lifelong passion I always came back to. I travel widely, drawn to archaeology and to the patterns that connect people, places, and ideas across time.
That search for patterns runs through everything I care about: anthropology, semiotics, and cybernetics, and the thinkers who live where those meet. Gregory Bateson above all, alongside Norbert Wiener, Margaret Mead, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Heinz von Foerster. Living in the shadow of this mountain, I've grown deeply drawn to the heritage of its Indigenous peoples: the traditions, stories, and cosmologies of Native California. Coming from the Caucasus, I keep finding striking resonances between the old cultures of my homeland, Georgia in particular, and those of Native California: echoes in how both hold their land, their stories, and their sense of the sacred. I try to learn from all of it, and honor it with care.
For us, Shastara is more than a B&B. It's part of a larger effort to reimagine hospitality for a more connected age. We're building a new kind of online hospitality service (you may have already met Shastara, our concierge, here on the site), designing smart, comfortable homes, and running small technology labs where we do hands-on research, much of it with universities. We also share what we learn: our YouTube channel, ShastaRanch, holds interviews, conversations, and learning materials worth passing along, at https://www.youtube.com/@ShastaRanch
If that mix of mountain hospitality and curiosity sounds unusual for a bed & breakfast, good. We believe a place to rest and a place to think belong together, and Mount Shasta has always drawn people looking for both.
Come for the mountain, the quiet, and a genuinely warm welcome, and say hello to Shastara while you're here.
Alexey Kuksin, on behalf of the Kuksin family and the Shastara LLC team