It seemed almost playful, like a child trying to hide.
A dad and his kid drove up the side of Mount Shasta to the trailhead for what they remember as the Old Ski Bowl trail. It's barren country up there: a steep incline of rocks, boulders and dirt, with hardly any trees. About an hour in they passed something odd, a group of big boulders arranged in a circle. Strange, but they kept going.
They only met three other people all day, or at least that's what they looked like. The first two were another father and son, coming down a steep stretch that ran along the wall of a cliff. Everyone stopped, said hello, chatted about the trail and went their separate ways.
About two minutes later, the younger hiker looked back. The other pair were way down the trail, a stretch that should have taken them twenty minutes at least. There was nobody else up there, and the colours of their clothes were easy to spot, so it was definitely them. The dad saw it too. They both thought it was weird and kept climbing.
At the top of the cliff was another stone arrangement off the side of the trail, much bigger than the first, the rocks set out in rows almost like gravestones. A bit further on, the trail reached a point where they'd need climbing gear, so they turned back.
That's when the younger hiker spotted a man standing among the rocks, staring at them. Button-up shirt, cargo shorts, a wide-brimmed straw hat. He was close enough that his face should have been easy to make out, but it was like he didn't have one, just skin. As soon as the dad looked over, the man ducked behind a boulder and peeked over the top at them. It was almost playful, like a kid playing hide and seek.
The next few moments are a blank for the younger hiker. According to the dad, his kid just started walking toward the man, while he called out asking where on earth they were going. The younger hiker came to standing right at the edge of a cliff, above a drop big enough to kill someone. The dad grabbed his kid, pulled them back onto the trail, said to stay put, and went down to the boulders to find the man. Nobody was there. The only ways off that slope were up or down the trail, and the man had taken neither.
Neither of them has an explanation. Later, reading up on it, the younger hiker found other stories about a faceless man in a hat, and learned that local tribes have long treated Mount Shasta as a sacred mountain, guarded by spirits who don't take kindly to people climbing it.