Lassen
David & I spent the weekend camping & hiking at Lassen Volcanic National Park. We got up super early on Saturday, and got to the park's south entrance in 4 hours. My original plan was to spend Saturday hiking to King's Creek Falls, and then Sunday hiking to the summit of Mount Lassen.
I drove out to the turn-off which was marked "King's Creek", but this turned out to be a picnic area with a trailhead that didn't go to King's Creek Falls at all. Apparently the park has a picnic area named King's Creek (even though the creek is no where in view), and then a separate trail, 2 miles down the road, which has the trailhead for King's Creek Falls. The trail at the picnic area went past Cold Boiling Lake, to finish 2.5 miles later at the south end of Bumpass Hell. While we had hiked to Bumpass Hell roughly 2 years ago, it was via the shorter trail off the main park road, so this seemed like it might be a new, decent hike anyway. As its name implied, Cold Boiling Lake is a lake that appears to be boiling. This is due to air that is bubbling up from under the lake.
Afterwords, we continued on another 1.7 miles, all up hill, to Bumpass Hell. The hike was long, moderately strenuous, but quite scenic. Long stretches of it hugged the side of the mountain, and were rather narrow. David really enjoyed exploring Bumpass Hell alot, although he wasn't too crazy about the stinky steam. The hike back was, thankfully all down hill, and we got back to the car about 3.5 hours after departing.
At this point, it was too late in the day to attempt another 5 mile hike, since I still needed to find & setup our campsite for that night. So, I drove another 7 miles down the road to the Summit Lake South campground. One thing that I noticed on the way in was that the entire campground was completely full that night. All the same, all the campsites were decently spaced apart, and the amenities were also decent (potable water, toilets, trash cans, etc). What peaked David's interest was Summit Lake which ran along the northwest border of the campground. David saw a bunch of other kids swimming, and he kept begging me to let him go in. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring his swim trunks, but I let him take off his socks & shoes, and wade in up to his knees. That excited him sufficiently enough to start splashing & jumping.
Following a pretty decent dinner (macaroni, canned mackerel, onions, peas & lime juice), we headed over to the lakeside amphitheater for a ranger program about volcanoes. It was a nice program where the ranger explained about the 4 different types of volcanoes, and how each is presented in the park. He even did mock demonstrations of each type with a mockup volcano made of a coffee can & masking tape. David was thrilled to volunteer to help with the demonstrations.
That night it was clear & cold. David actually pointed out how many stars we could see. When we woke up at 7AM the next morning it was 37F. We ate our breakfast fast, and then jumped in the car with the heat on to warm up as I drove out to the trail head for the King's Creek Falls hike. This hike was a lot of fun going out, and alot of work going back. The hike out starts off going past a nice meadow, and then follows a series of steep granite cascades down hill. The cascades consist of alot of rock scrambling along side the rushing rapids. David did an amazing job climbing down a series of rather steep rocks. Then the trail cuts away from the creek for a short while, before heading back to finish at the falls. We had a choice of two routes going back up hill, and I opted for the 2nd, slightly longer route, because it was supposed to be easier. While it was debatable whether it was easier, it was definitely not nearly as scenic, plus it was called the "Horse Trail" which meant that we had to watch where we stepped. We did the 5 mile round trip in just over 2 hours, which was very good time.
At this point, David was telling me that he was no longer interested in hiking up to the top of Mt. Lassen because he was tired. Granted, this was not going to be an easy hike. It starts at an altitude of 8400ft, and the summit is at 10457ft, so its about 2000ft to the top. I ended up bribing David with all the trail mix that he could eat on the hike, and he grudgingly agreed. The trail to the summit is 2.5 miles, and is a series of switchbacks which grow shorter, more narrow & more steep as it progresses to the summit. To make a long story short, we made it within about 0.8 miles from the top when I started to get some very severe altitude sickness, and David had been dragging his feet much of the way. Even so, the views(yes, that's the parking lot where we started, with Lake Helen behind it) from that altitude were awesome. This picture gives a pretty good idea of how steep the southern flank of the mountain is. It took us nearly 3 hours to get as far as we did, about an hour to hike back down. While I'm somewhat disappointed that we didn't make it to the summit, it was still a good hike.
Overall, it was a great weekend.