Lassen Volcanic National Park

Dan and I have wanted to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park since we moved to California. Dan is a sucker for anything with "volcanic" in its name and I am a sucker for smores. In celebration of our third aniversary and to just go camping we headed up for a long four day weekend along with some friends, Arum & Steve.

Dan, Arum & Steve cooking dinner

The first thing I loved about this park was that, unlike the rest of the national parks in California, it was not crawling with people. We had many of the trails to ourselves. The second thing I loved was our campsite. We spoiled ourselves and car camped for this trip. We had a great site in the Summit Lake North campground. As the name suggests, this campground sits at 7500 feet right beside a beautiful small mountain lake. I loved finishing the day with a very brisk, but refreshing swim in the lake. Steve enjoyed fighting small children for the best logs in the lake which he used as his personal rafts. I wanted him him to try log-rolling but he thought the logs were much better suited as flotation devices. The campground also had incredibly clean bathrooms with flushing toilets and sinks ....very spoiled.

Summit Lake

The hiking in Lassen was the true highlight of the trip. The scenery was beautiful and the trails were empty. Here are the hikes we did:
1) Lassen Peak - The 10,500 foot mountain in the center of the park which is the southern most volcano in the Cascades and last errupted from 1917-1921. The 2.5 mile trail climbs 2000 feet to the summit with gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains and lakes.

Everyone at the top of Mt. Lassen

2) Bumpass Hell to Kings Creek - We divided in two groups, boys and girls, for this hike so that we could combine two other hikes into a one-way trek. The girls got the downhill direction while the boys were stuck climbing another 1200 feet for the day (thanks boys!). This trail reminded me of a combination of Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Park. Starting from Bumpass Hell (the dowhill direction), you amble through mountain scenery until you descend over a ridge into the valley of Bumpass Hell. The smell of sulfur is almost overwhelming and steam, mud-pots, and bubling lakes cover the valley floor. The second half of the hike was probably my favorite hike for the weekend. The descent from Bumpass Hell to Kings Creek passes through a beautiful valley with tons of wildflowers and mountain lakes. The one-way trek is 4 miles.

Steaming Bumpass Hell

3) Choas Crags - The erruption of Lassen Peak in the early 1900s left fields of giant boulders across one side of the mountain. We took a hike up to a small lake left in the middle of this field of boulders.

Descending the chaos crags

4) Lake Manzanita & Nature Trail - Lake Manzanita is the main camping and ranger station in the park. The largest campground is also on this site. Lake Manzanita is a larger lake (room for kayaking and fishing) with stunning views of all the mountains in the park. We did a nice relaxing loop around the lake and a short nature hike by the visitors center. I finally learned the difference between a few pine trees on the nature hike .... Jeffrey Pines smell like butterscotch or vanilla (I'd heard this before but didn't know what kind of pine tree had this unique smell ... go smell a bunch of pine trees til you find one - it is great) ... Sugar Pines have gigantic (12-22") pine cones.

Staghorn Lichen

Mt. Lassen from Manzanita Lake

5) Kings Creek Falls - On our final morning we fit in one last hike to a series of waterfalls. The climb down was steep as the actual trail had been shut down due to rock slides and another trail had been forged down the side of the cliff/hill. The view at the bottom was well worth the climb - the waterfall cascaded down a long shoot through a narrow canyon.

Waterfalls!

In our three days and three nights in the park I felt like we got to see the majority of the park; however, on the far East side there is a cinder cone (think black sand dune) and the "Fantastic Lava Beds" that I would still like to see someday ... just have to schedule time for another camping trip - and more smores.

Subaru's first camping trip