Tag Archives: Lassen Volcanic

Lassen Volcanic National Park to Crater Lake National Park: Winter Arrives in Summer

Lassen Peak, Lassen Volcanic National Park

Munson Ridge, Crater Lake National Park

On Monday, September 16, we woke into a world that could hardly have been more different than the warm and sunny afternoon we’d enjoyed the day before. Over the next few days, as our trip shifted northward from California into Oregon, the weather also shifted, from summer to what felt like winter. It altered the trajectory of our trip, and it added a flavor of adventure that was reminiscent of the sudden cold snap in our during our trip to the Dakotas five years earlier.

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Lassen Volcanic National Park: On the Pacific Crest

On Sunday, September 15, we spent a classic National Park day in the wild heart of Lassen Volcanic National Park. I love a day when we can rise from our tent and go see some amazingly lovely sights propelled by nothing but our own legs. On the docket for our big hike day in Lassen was an 11.6 mile loop over creeks, around lakes, and into the Park’s designated wilderness.

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Lassen Volcanic National Park: Butte Lake and the Fantastic Lava Beds

Butte Lake

Sean and I had wrapped up our auto tour of the Lassen Volcanic National Park Highway by about ten to three on Saturday, September 14. We decided to spend the rest of the day exploring the area around Butte Lake in the northeast corner of the Park, an area that was once a separate National Monument before it was incorporated into the National Park.

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Lassen Volcanic National Park: Park Highway

Brokeoff Mountain

Sean and I arrived at the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center at about a quarter after eleven on the morning of Saturday, September 14. The LEED-certified platinum building only opened in 2008 and was Lassen Volcanic National Park’s first formal visitor center. Our intention was to check out the visitor center and then drive the Park Highway all the way to the northwest entrance at Manzanita Lake, stopping at the interpreted sites along the way.

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Lassen Volcanic National Park: Into the Cascades

Lake Helen beneath Lassen Peak

Lassen Volcanic National Park protects over 106,000 acres at the southern end of the Cascade Range in northern California, including Lassen Peak. Lassen Peak, southernmost in a string of legendary volcanoes (Shasta, Hood, St. Helens, Rainier, Baker) in a range that stretches north to British Columbia, is quiet today, but it was in the midst of an eruption just a century ago. In 1907, the year after passage of the Antiquities Act gave him the power, President Theodore Roosevelt declared two National Monuments in the Cascade Range east of Redding, California: Lassen Peak National Monument and Cinder Cone National Monument. Seven years later, in May 1914, long dormant Lassen Peak began to erupt (after an estimated 27,000 years of inactivity). The following year, in May 1915, the mountain exploded, sending a column of ash and steam 30,000 feet into the air and partially collapsing in on itself with flows of mud, ash, and pumice traveling some twenty-five miles from the crater. Major steam eruptions continued into 1921, with some 400 total eruptions between 1914 and 1921. In August 1916 with the eruption very much ongoing, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation combining the National Monuments and expanding them into Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Lassen Volcanic National Park had long been among the Parks I’d been most excited to visit in this whole journey. In fact, more often than not, I’d cited it as the Park I was most excited to visit. Now just past noon on Friday, September 13, having finished packing up our campsite on the beach, we were on our way there.

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“Shasta,” a West Coast Adventure in Two Cities and Three National Parks: Planning

Banana Slugs on Redwood sapling, Redwood National Park

Ponderosa Pine stump near Butte Lake and Fantastic Lava Beds, Lassen Volcanic National Park

Wolf Lichen on Whitebark Pine snag with Wizard Island, Crater Lake National Park

For a long time, I’d known that I wanted to spend my 40th birthday at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. So I’d always be able to answer the question, “Which Parks are you going to do next?” with a nod to a distant trip to Guadalupe Mountains. Then it became the next Park, and then that trip came and went. Afterward, we weren’t sure where exactly we would focus for the next big trip, but a grand trip that had been percolating in my mind soon became the clear frontrunner. In early 2019 we began planning a trip with great bookend cities and some iconic Parks: flying into Portland, doing the three Parks that surround northern California’s Mount Shasta, and flying home from San Francisco. Redwood National Park just sounded magical. Crater Lake National Park is one of the iconic early Parks. And Lassen Volcanic has long been one of the Parks in the system I’ve been most excited about.

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