By the time we arrived in Lassen, all of us were suuuuper grumpy. It was a pretty long drive made longer by construction and lots of lengthy waits to go on a one-way road due to the construction closures, and none of us were feeling particularly friendly towards one another by the time we got to our campsite! (It was also about 8:30 PM and we hadn't had dinner and still had to set up camp...way later than our planned arrival.)
But we made it! The next morning Neil and I woke up early again and went for a run around Manzanita Lake. It was gorgeous and helped a lot with my crankiness, and when we got back to our campsite my dad had arrived after driving through from Yosemite!
I had also learned from someone in the bathroom the previous night about a workaround for a trail closure to the area I had most wanted to see (Bumpass Hell). So we drove to the Kings Creek picnic area and started hiking through an area burned by the Dixie Fire. Basically we turned what is normally a short saunter from the parking lot into a 7-mile hike, but who's counting?
This is definitely a hike to start early, as there's virtually no tree cover in the burned areas, which cover about 70% of the park. A few days after we got home, Lassen closed again due to the proximity of the Park Fire. As in Great Basin, where we visited the rapidly dwindling last glacier left in Nevada, we felt very much that a lot of these wild places are in a "see them before they're gone" situation.
Hiking in burned areas is not only really hot, it's also hazardous in ways that you might not expect--ground instability, hazard trees, etc.
Eventually we could smell sulfur and knew that we were close! Lassen is similar to Yellowstone in many ways due to its hydrothermal features, but unlike Yellowstone, it's the only place in the world where you can see all four types of volcanoes in close proximity.
But honestly, it just really made all of us wish we were going to Yellowstone! We'd talked about trying to squeeze it in but ultimately decided we didn't have time.
Several sections were inaccessible because the ground had shifted and the previous boardwalks had basically fallen into the thermal area.
]If you look closely, you'll see that the river water here is gray with all the mineral runoff (and boiling hot!)
Pretty cool.
Then we started on the long hike back...
And holy cow we were all SO hot at the end of the hike!! We went over to the creek that ran past the parking lot and took off our boots to wash off all the ash and dust that totally coated us all to the knees (hiking through ash for miles and miles is as filthy as you think it is).
We were admiring the gorgeous stream when we realized that there was a mother bear on the other side with two cubs!
We were super excited and watched her for about an hour. I was kind of freaking out about how close we were (LITTLE DID I KNOW).
Pic through binoculars!
Still lots of snow on the ground--the park road had just barely opened!
Then we headed to the visitor center (and got some pretty good ice cream) and stopped at the Devastated Area on our way back, which is basically a whole bunch of giant boulders that blew out of the top of Mt. Lassen during its last eruption a hundred years ago. But what really impressed our kids were the pinecones.
We had steak kebabs with the veggies and it was soooo good.
The next day we headed up Lassen Peak bright and early! Another one with zero shade so one you want to start EARLY.
Basically you're just hiking up a volcano through all kinds of volcanic rock. It is very, very, very clear that you are hiking up a volcano.
Then you get to the top and you're like "yep I can see the caldera, this is definitely a volcano."
One thing that I really loved about the Pacific Northwest was that as you get higher up it is SO EASY to see the chain of other volcanic mountains all around you.
The summit was pretty cool since it's basically a bunch of melted rock that has had other giant boulders smashed onto it during eruptions.
Also of note, the bugs were really bad up here.
Love this picture of Nathan!
Another good look at that caldera. Seriously so cool.
And all of us, including Dad! I did a great job taking pictures of individuals and mountains on this trip, not so great with group shots.
Then we started hiking down, and it was long and hot with a glorious expanse of unbroken snow next to us where people were skiing down. Remembering how much we'd loved glissading the day before, we thought hmm maybe we should glissade down.
I don't have any pictures of what happened next, but basically we waited about a mile until the slope was less steep, put on our microspikes, and started to glissade. Almost immediately I realized that the snow was basically just ice and told the kids to go back and not bring Matty down. Then I fell...probably 100 feet. It was terrifying. I was trying to dig in my spikes and my poles and couldn't get any purchase whatsoever in the snow. I finally managed to dig in enough to stop. I was so far down at this point that I had to traverse across the snowfield to get back to the path, but at this point I realized my phone had fallen out of my shorts. It was a total miracle that I was able to ping it from my watch and found it buried about 20 feet uphill. Started the traverse again, and slid again. By the time I made it off, I was pretty banged up (lots of bruises and skinned knees/elbows/arms) and feeling pretty upset with myself because it's stupid mistakes like these that turn deadly in the outdoors. I'm really lucky that I didn't get any lasting injuries or that anyone else was hurt.
So yep, no pictures of that, but this picture of watermelon snow represents how I felt like that might end at one point. Ugh!
After all of that drama, we got back down to the parking lot and it was boiling hot (100ish?) so we decided to drive outside the park to the Subway Lava Tubes where it was a nice chilly 50 or so. Great plan.
I think we happily would all have taken up residence in the caves at that point.
We stopped for gas on our way back to the park, and my dad bought everyone their own pint of Haagen-Daz and we sat by a stream and soaked our feet (whoo-hoo, snowmelt again!) and between the frigid stream and the ice cream it felt pretty bearable.
Luke's majestic hair...I think at this point we were maybe 8 days in and while Neil and I had either gone swimming or showered in our popup tent/Nemo shower every night, Luke was rocking some pretty crazy hair thanks to bugspray/sunscreen/general dirtiness.
And then we packed up and headed for the coast and I have to record the fact that when we stopped at Costco it was really, really, really hot.
We were admiring the gorgeous stream when we realized that there was a mother bear on the other side with two cubs!
We were super excited and watched her for about an hour. I was kind of freaking out about how close we were (LITTLE DID I KNOW).
Pic through binoculars!
Still lots of snow on the ground--the park road had just barely opened!
Then we headed to the visitor center (and got some pretty good ice cream) and stopped at the Devastated Area on our way back, which is basically a whole bunch of giant boulders that blew out of the top of Mt. Lassen during its last eruption a hundred years ago. But what really impressed our kids were the pinecones.
We had steak kebabs with the veggies and it was soooo good.
The next day we headed up Lassen Peak bright and early! Another one with zero shade so one you want to start EARLY.
Basically you're just hiking up a volcano through all kinds of volcanic rock. It is very, very, very clear that you are hiking up a volcano.
Then you get to the top and you're like "yep I can see the caldera, this is definitely a volcano."
One thing that I really loved about the Pacific Northwest was that as you get higher up it is SO EASY to see the chain of other volcanic mountains all around you.
The summit was pretty cool since it's basically a bunch of melted rock that has had other giant boulders smashed onto it during eruptions.
Also of note, the bugs were really bad up here.
Love this picture of Nathan!
Another good look at that caldera. Seriously so cool.
And all of us, including Dad! I did a great job taking pictures of individuals and mountains on this trip, not so great with group shots.
Then we started hiking down, and it was long and hot with a glorious expanse of unbroken snow next to us where people were skiing down. Remembering how much we'd loved glissading the day before, we thought hmm maybe we should glissade down.
I don't have any pictures of what happened next, but basically we waited about a mile until the slope was less steep, put on our microspikes, and started to glissade. Almost immediately I realized that the snow was basically just ice and told the kids to go back and not bring Matty down. Then I fell...probably 100 feet. It was terrifying. I was trying to dig in my spikes and my poles and couldn't get any purchase whatsoever in the snow. I finally managed to dig in enough to stop. I was so far down at this point that I had to traverse across the snowfield to get back to the path, but at this point I realized my phone had fallen out of my shorts. It was a total miracle that I was able to ping it from my watch and found it buried about 20 feet uphill. Started the traverse again, and slid again. By the time I made it off, I was pretty banged up (lots of bruises and skinned knees/elbows/arms) and feeling pretty upset with myself because it's stupid mistakes like these that turn deadly in the outdoors. I'm really lucky that I didn't get any lasting injuries or that anyone else was hurt.
So yep, no pictures of that, but this picture of watermelon snow represents how I felt like that might end at one point. Ugh!
After all of that drama, we got back down to the parking lot and it was boiling hot (100ish?) so we decided to drive outside the park to the Subway Lava Tubes where it was a nice chilly 50 or so. Great plan.
I think we happily would all have taken up residence in the caves at that point.
We stopped for gas on our way back to the park, and my dad bought everyone their own pint of Haagen-Daz and we sat by a stream and soaked our feet (whoo-hoo, snowmelt again!) and between the frigid stream and the ice cream it felt pretty bearable.
Luke's majestic hair...I think at this point we were maybe 8 days in and while Neil and I had either gone swimming or showered in our popup tent/Nemo shower every night, Luke was rocking some pretty crazy hair thanks to bugspray/sunscreen/general dirtiness.
And then we packed up and headed for the coast and I have to record the fact that when we stopped at Costco it was really, really, really hot.
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