Thursday, October 17, 2019
Today we decided to go see Lassen Volcanic National Park. It is one of the lesser known national parks and not visited by a lot of people.
We arrived and the ranger at the entrance told us that the main road through the park (and to the things we had planned to see) was closed. Only a 10 mile stretch was opened and the entrance at the opposite end of the park was also closed (including the visitor center). We were rather disappointed but decided to go ahead and see if there were some trails we could hike.
A little history from the NPS.gov pages on Lassen Peak:
On May 22, 1915, an explosive eruption at Lassen Peak, the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range, devastated nearby areas and rained volcanic ash as far away as 200 miles to the east. This explosion was the most powerful in a 1914-17 series of eruptions that were the last to occur in the Cascades before the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
Our first hike started at this very clear lake.
Yep, that’s snow on the side of the trail.
Come walk with me…
The weather was nice and clear and sunny. Temperatures were a bit chilly up at 6000-7000 foot elevation though.
Often a trail is marked with cairns (towers of stone) to give hikers direction on a trail.
I like this one(0:
The boys play stick-it-or-lick-it. They have to stick the landing…if they don’t, they have to lick the landing (hence motivation to make it stick the first try). This is really neat tree limb making a bow.
Sap icicles
On our second hike, we came across this huge boulder. Obviously thrown here from the volcanic explosion a 100 years ago.
Figuring out how to get up.
Made it!
We hiked in the woods along a creek.
It was very pretty and there were hardly any other people here…it felt like we had the park all to ourselves.
Waterfalls
The views on this hike were not disappointing.
We ended up at this meadow…but it was a very wet meadow. We thought it was better defined as a fen (a low and marshy or frequently flooded area of land).
We had to watch carefully where we stepped…there were little creeks all wound through the meadow.
This tree was quite unique.
Fall colors
Nice shot of the volcano.
Notice the cool cloud around the top of the mountain. This type of cloud is called a lenticular cloud. Click HERE to see some images of others)
Funny Jeremiah
We’ll be leaving tomorrow to head south towards Concord, CA for the boys’ competition on Sunday.