Lassen Volcanic National Park, a new Park to add to my top ten!
We talked to a ranger at Lava Beds who exclaimed, when they heard we were headed to Lassen next, "Oh, I love that park. It's so beautiful and there's so much to do." Now, I took this not just with a grain of salt, but with a huge lump. I mean after all, we were in a place that I believe would be pretty low on most people's aesthetic scale, if you're interested in volcanology it would rate fairly high but we were talking about a national park with "volcanic" in its name.🙄 I find volcanoes interesting, but …. Not only that, but I'd never heard of Lassen Volcanic National Park before. Not that I'm an expert on all things national park related … but I've heard of, if not visited, quite a few of them. Surely if it was really special, I would have heard of it. So, let's just say I was not overly optimistic about our next stop that was still pretty much in the middle of nowhere, south of Lava Beds, in the North East corner of California.
For the record, let me state, I was completely wrong! It is a gorgeous park, one that I have added to my top ten list and sincerely hope to visit again. So, yes, it does have stuff about volcanoes. It actually has all four different types of volcanoes in this one area (yes, there are four different types of volcanoes, shield cone, cinder cone, composite cone and plug cone). It has mountains, green spaces, rivers and streams, lakes, flowers, butterflies, birds and wildlife. It has fabulous hiking trails. And it still has snow on the ground (in places) in August. It also has interesting geothermal features, the Devastated Area that happened when a volcano erupted in 1915 and spewed rock and ash over a swath of the park and a volcanic peak that you can hike up and look into the caldera. You can even hike into the caldera if you want.
I mean, really, it has it all.
I have to apologize right up front, since this park has it all, this blog is a little on the long side. But there was such a variety of things to share I couldn't help myself. Feel free to zoom by sections if they don't really interest you. 😆
On to pics
reflections. Lassen peak on the right and Chaos Crags on the left reflecting in Manzanita Lake. And if you blow up the pic, that little whitish speck at almost 3:00, is a fly fisherman in water nearly to his waist, casting.
Another view of Manzanita Lake.
More peaks in the park.
Green meadows with Lassen peak keeping watch.
And this alpine meadow is filled with purple and yellow flowers.
Check out these gorgeous greens of the lichen covered trees contrasting with the new growth of the fir tree.
Views of Summit Lake, the lake at our campground.
Driftwood in the lake
Wildlife and birds
Canada goose
Heron
Oh, hello there, sweet thing.
Mule deer have gigantic ears. I think it makes them especially cute.
Mom, what's that?
Western Wood Peewee
Bufflehead mom with little mini-me babies. Aren't they the cutest?
So is this guy a chipmunk or a golden mantle ground squirrel? A golden mantle ground squirrel. Why? His stripes do not carry forward onto his face. They stop at his neck. Now you all know. (Personally, I think he still looks like a chipmunk.)
Ducks basking in the golden light of late afternoon.
A yellow bellied marmot
This little Wilson's Warbler is no doubt feeling pretty happy, but no warbling for him right now or he'd drop his worm.
A Western Tiger Swallowtail on Turk's Cap lilies growing along the roadside.
California Tortoiseshell
Lorquin's Admiral
A monarch
A monarch and another sphinx moth!
West Coast Lady
Variable Checkerspot
(???)
Boisduval's Blue
Dotted Blue (I think)
Everlasting (maybe?), interesting flowers whatever they are.
Turk's Cap Lilies
Not really sure what these are (looked like something from the coreopsis family???) but there were masses of them covering some of the hillsides. Gorgeousness.
Red Mountain Heather. We saw a lot of this along the higher elevation lakes and some of the trails. Sweet little flowers.
Again, no idea what these are, but they were very interesting.
Corn lily. We saw these in King's Canyon and Sequoia NP, but they hadn't blossomed yet. At that point they reminded me of skunk cabbage. Now they are these gorgeous flowering giants.
A visual cacauphany of colors in the flowers along the Kings Canyon Falls trail.
Mariposa lily
Skyrocket or Scarlet Gilia
On another trail, near another waterfall a bumblebee zeroing in for a pollen deposit on "regular" lupines
These lupines, are much shorter and have this pretty silvery foliage. They are alpine lupines. There were carpets of them along some of the trails in the higher elevations.
Lassen had a wildfire two years ago, the Dixie Fire. Along one section of the park road there was fire devastation on one side and the other was perfectly untouched. It was quite surreal.
We did one hike that went through a section of the burned area down to a stream with a waterfall and then back up along the stream. It was a highly recommended hike, but seemed questionable with all that burned area to traverse. I was surprised that I actually found it interesting in the burned area. I'm always fascinated in form and the lines your eyes travel when viewing it. I found this burned area made me think sometimes of a Dr Seuss creation, like Whoville, and other times I thought the lines and shapes of the trees looked like modern dancers with the arcs and extensions of their bodies. I found it to be surprisingly beautiful.
And then in the middle of this baren, burned area, life giving water with its small band of green.
Kings Creek Falls
The trail back out was up along the stream. Rushing cascading water, flowers, butterflies. It was stunning.
A nest of baby robins looking for mom to come by with something yummy.
Geothermal features
At the Sulfur Works; fumerals, boiling streams and
mudpots
Bumpass Hell features.
Now you know there has to be a story with a name like that … There was an old coger named K.V. Bumpass who bought up the land and wanted to open a tourist attraction. He was guiding a group of guests down to the geothermal features and cautioning them to step only where he stepped because the surfaces were "treacherous and it was easy to break through the crust into boiling mud below. He concluded his (safety) talk with a quote from Virgil, "that the descent to hell is easy". He turned, took a step and plunged his leg through to the boiling mud beneath which clinging to his limb, burned him severely. If our guide had been a profane man, I believe he would have cursed a little; as it was, I think his silence was owing to the inability to do the subject justice. Mr. Bumpass didn't say a word. If Mr. Bumpass had been a profane man, he sure would have uttered some words, but he was not. It made the experience seem that much worse." Editor, Red Bluff Independent 1865.
I mean, really, you can't make this stuff up. 😂
Looking up from Bumpass Hell.
Reflections in a thermal pool.
Look closely under the steam in the center of the pic and you can see the "boiling mud" shooting upward.
And flowing down like a stream
Fumerals
Martin, staying on the trail. Thank goodness!
The colors of the rocks and pools are so vivid and interesting. Certainly reminiscent of the geothermal areas in Yellowstone NP.
Our last big adventure at the park was hiking up Lassen Peak. I was excited, I was nervous, I was trepidatious. There was no shade. (We were hiking up the side of a volcano, not much growing there.) We were starting at 8,500' and hiking up to over 10,000' and the trail is 2.5 miles long (one way). That's nearly a 2,000' elevation gain in 2.5 miles and then turning around and coming back down. 😬
I'm not going to say it was easy, because it wasn't. There just isn't as much oxygen in the air at those elevations (at least that's what I kept telling myself 😂). But it was spectacular. And stunning. And an accomplishment that I'm pretty proud of. But before we all start congratulating me for my accomplishment, let me just say, that there was an "older" gentleman and his son who were hiking the peak the same day we were. The "older gentleman" had hiked the peak fifty years ago. Yes, I said 5 0. 50! He was 85 yrs old !!! He was unbelievable. He just tootled right up that mountain like there was nothing to it. We couldn't keep up with him. Let me rephrase that, I couldn't keep up with him. He was an inspiration.
View from the bottom, snow field and all.
We got a good start, but almost as soon as we made it up over the first big climb we started meeting a bunch of teens coming down. Turns out, they were part of a Sierra Club work camp and had chosen, let me repeat that, chosen to hike up to watch the sunrise from the peak, and here's the catch, on their day off. Say what???
Views on the way up.
There were trees in this lower section. As we were hiking along some Clark's Nutcrackers were making a huge racket. We finally came upon them. It was a mama and her babies, who were big enough to have left the nest, but apparently not big enough to feed themselves yet. So mom (and dad probably,) were bringing them food and they were like, "MOM,MOM,ME,ME IM SO HUNGRY MOM MOM ME ME". It was pretty funny and cute once we understood why they were making so much noise.
One of the cool things about this hike is that you get to keep looking down at Lake Helen. It just gets smaller the higher you go.
Of course, the views in any direction are amazing!
We're getting up there now. Just these volcanic features to be seen. A couple of plugged vents. Also, note the steepness of the trail. That's Martin up ahead on the trail.
Credit for this next pic goes to the son of the father and son team I mentioned earlier, Matt Spinetta of prismic photography, turns out he's a professional! Thanks Matt for the pics! By the way, that's a pic of Martin and me making our way up the side of this volcano. Are we crazy? Or living life to it's fullest? 🤷
Then, when you're sure you've finally made it to the top…you haven't. You still have to cross a snow field. (Interesting side note, a couple of people hiked up with their skis and boots and skied down the peak. It was pretty cool to watch, but I think it was harder to ski than they thought it would be. Like really deep, irregular moguls.)
Then, after crossing the snowfield there was a wild scramble up this loose rocky business to the top and there wasn't really a trail to follow anymore. It was a "free for all" and was not my favorite part of the hike.
But this was pretty cool 😎
Coming back down the really steep "free for all" section and looking into the caldera. Another photo credit to Matt of prismic photography. As you can see, it was a gorgeous day.
Another pic of the caldera, the center of the plug type of volcano. If you look closely you can see the ridge of the lava plug going across the center of the caldera.
Some rim shots of the caldera
Wait, what is this??? Life growing in amongst this rock. How can that happen?
But one of the most amazing phenomenons that we encountered were butterflies. Apparently, they ride the thermal air currents right up to the top of the mountain during their migration season. So you're hiking up there on the peak of a volcano, snow, rock, 10,000'+ and suddenly there are these butterflies. Not just one or two, not just ten or fifteen. There were literally hundreds floating, flying, drifting, landing on the rock. Clouds of them flying around you. Rivers of them, following the air currents. It was truly a magical experience that was essentially impossible to capture in a picture…only as a memory.
These were a few that I was able to catch after they had landed for a moment, but even that was challenging because they would lift off and be gone within seconds.
California Tortoiseshell Butterflies
And we're headed back down. Lake Helen, looking pretty small, but there to welcome us.
Views on the way down.
Brokeoff Mountain (Mount Tehama) an example of the stratovolcano or composite volcano. Let's just say, there's not much left of the peak, that's for sure.
And we made it down. It was a fabulous hike. And an amazing Park. Not crowded, temperate, beautiful, great hikes, interesting features to see and such funny names like Devastated Area, Chaos Crags and Bumpass Hell. This park should go on everyone's top ten list!
Next stop: A revisit from last fall where we dried out and prepped Myrtle for her vacation. (We told her that was what it was. A vacation with all the other RVs, trailers and boats, certainly not a storage facility 😂) And ourselves for the two months at home in VT .❤️ It turned out to be a lovely spot, a birders paradise. Lake Salerno County Recreation Area.
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