Climbing all four different kinds of Volcanoes in Lassen Volcanic National Park

 

When it comes to national parks, California has an abundance of riches.  It is home to 9 out of America’s 63 national parks, more than any other state in the country.  Four of these parks—Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Lassen Volcanic National Park—lie along the state’s eastern mountain spine, comprised of the Sierra Nevada and southern end of the Cascade ranges.

Within this group, Yosemite, followed by Sequoia and Kings Canyon, receive by far and away the most visitors.  This makes Lassen Volcanic National Park a poor stepchild to its more renowned counterparts.  That is a shame, as Lassen has quite a lot to offer.  As the name implies, the park is home not just to the Lassen Peak volcano, which underwent a major eruption in 1914, but several other volcanoes which could blow in the future.  All four basic types of volcanoes can be found here:  plug dome (Lassen Peak), shield (Prospect Peak), composite (Brokeoff Mountain), and cinder cone (Cinder Cone).  Besides the volcanoes, the park has steam vents, boiling springs, sulfur works, and bubbling mud pots, all of which are indicative of an area whose volcanic center remains active.  This makes Lassen a paradise for anyone who is really into geology.  On top of that, since the park is less heavily visited, it doesn’t have the crowds and bumper-to-bumper traffic plaguing Yosemite National Park.

Having hiked 1,500 miles up and down the High Sierra Nevada crest and explored most parts of these magnificent mountains, I’ve been anxious these past few years to diversify my hiking portfolio.  Lassen Volcanic National Park had long been on my bucket list, as it provided a chance to check out another mountain range, the Cascade Range, and would also give me an opportunity to bag more summits (I am on a mission to climb up 60 peaks in my 60s’s and am currently about halfway there).  I had planned to go there two summers ago, but the park was closed by the devastating and massive 2021 Dixie Fire, which burned through part of its southern end.  So when Lassen was reopened to visitors last summer, I jumped at the chance to go there.  The park really lived up to my high expectations.

I car camped outside Lassen’s north boundary in one of the three campgrounds along Hat Creek around Old Station.  My first full day visiting the park was spent climbing up Lassen Peak.  At 10,457 feet, Lassen is the highest point in California between Freel Peak (10,886 feet), which is south of Lake Tahoe, and the next major volcano in the Cascade Range, Mount Shasta (14,180 feet).  I headed south on California State Route 89, which runs through Lassen, veering east and then back west before reaching its point in the park at 8,512 feet.  After dipping slightly, it quickly reaches the large parking lot at the Lassen Peak trailhead (that lot is on the north side of the road). 

During the short 2.5 miles from the trailhead to the Lassen Peak summit, I climbed 2,000 feet, making this a pretty strenuous hike.  The ascent was relentless, taking me up innumerable switchbacks running along the south side of Lassen Peak.  This climb and the Bumpass Hell, which I visited three days later, were the only places in the park where there were lots of people.  The trail is very well maintained and wide enough to accommodate the crowds of climbers.  And unlike its rocky counterparts in the Sierra Nevada, the surface of the path was very smooth.  Along the way, I enjoyed the numerous turnouts which charted my distance/progress up to the summit while explaining the plants and wildlife around Lassen Peak. 

I took it slow and steady climbing up Lassen, using the trail turnouts to take several rest breaks.  It took me two hours, perhaps a little more than that, to get to where the official National Park Service trail ends, namely the rim of Lassen Peak’s caldera.  I paused there to read more informative displays about the volcano, stare down into the caldera, and take some photos of it.

Having done that, I had one of the many other people on caldera rim take a photo of me.  I was one happy mountaineer!  Giant Lake Almanor, to the south of Lassen Volcanic National Park, is barely visible in the photo’s background. 

One can see from these pictures that it had become cloudy by that time, and I got lightly sprinkled on after returning to my campground following the hike.  The bad light made it hard to take decent photos of the scenery surrounding Lassen Peak, but I still got one relatively good shot of the view looking south from the caldera.  The photo below shows the second and third highest peaks in the park, Brokeoff Mountain (9,235 feet) and Mount Diller (9,087 feet).  

The Lassen caldera rim isn’t, alas, the summit of the peak.  That summit is a pinnacle just east of the caldera rim.

I took the trail running from this spot, which dips a bit before crossing a snow patch—it’s there all through the summer nearly every year—and then fades away before the final rocky class 2 scramble to Lassen Peak’s summit.  Not that hard to go up, but a bit tricky going down, due to some loose rock.  Along the way, I heard an Asian looking couple talking in Mandarin Chinese and took the opportunity to practice my rusty Chinese with them.  They were from Shanghai.  In the next three days I encountered a surprisingly large number of Chinese people, both from Mainland China and Taiwan, during my hikes on this trip.

Of course, heading down from this mountain was much easier than climbing up it, taking me about half the time it took to get up to the top.  As with any hard climb, the descent underscored just how tough and steep this particular one had been.  About halfway down, I bumped into another Chinese person, an older lady from Taiwan.  When she told me she was from the island, I went out of my way to say “习近平是个坏蛋 (Xí Jìnpíng shìgè Huàidàn),” or “Xi Jinping is a bad egg,” a common Chinese insult.  She laughed appreciatively after hearing that.  I also noticed another older lady, probably in her 70s, huffing up to the summit.    

I spent my second full day In Lassen climbing up Brokeoff Mountain, also known as Mount Tehama.  Brokeoff is the heavily eroded remnant of what had been a much larger volcano.  To get to the trail to its summit, I drove just past the southern entrance to the park.  As was the case with the Lassen Peak hike, I did 2,000 feet of climbing, but that elevation gain was spread out over 3.6 miles, making for a markedly easier ascent.    

The first mile or so of the trail was a pleasant stroll amidst trees, tiny meadows, and small streams.  The east face and southern part of the Brokeoff Mountain summit ridge then came into view.

At this point, the hike got more strenuous.  While going up the west side of the summit ridge, I took in expensive views of the hazy northern Sacramento Valley before making the final climb to Brokeoff’s top. 

In contrast to the Lassen Peak hike, I encountered just a few people on the trail and shared the summit with three or four fellow peak baggers.  The north face of Brokeoff Mountain has a sheer drop, plunging hundreds of feet down (my hiking poles and day back are off to the left in the photo below). 

Since the weather was clear, I was able to better enjoy vistas from the top of the Brokeoff Mountain summit compared to my previous day up on Lassen Peak.  While there was lots of haze looking south, largely obscuring Lake Almanor, the light was perfect for taking shots of the outstanding view of Lassen Peak.

After getting to the trailhead and my car, I stopped to check out the larger of the park’s two visitor’s centers lying just beyond the south entry gate.  It was definitely worth visiting and gave me a chance to get a much-needed cup of iced coffee—the center sells coffee other beverages, but no food, save for packaged snacks (they also have merchandise and books about the park for sale).  While watching a video about the area in the center’s small screening room, I noticed a Chinese family and could hear their two young children say “瀑布 (Pùbuù),” or “waterfall,” after seeing one in the video that was playing.

I spent my third day at Lassen climbing its prototypical shield volcano, Prospect Peak (8,337 feet), which is in the northeast corner of the park.  To get there, I drove a bit north on 89 and then took California State Route 44 east, climbing up the Hat Creek Rim volcanic escarpment before the road leveled off and took me to gravel road going to Butte Lake.  Keep yours peeled to the south (right when going east) for the sign marking the turnoff to this road.  Since more than a few people go to Butte Lake, I’m puzzled as to why the National Park Service doesn’t turn this gravel road into a paved road.  There also isn’t any entry gate or ranger booth here, so people could, I suppose, visit this part of the park for free. 

The trailhead for Prospect Peak and the Cinder is near the Butte Lake boat launch.  The Prospect Peak trail veers off to the right from the more heavily traveled trail to the Cinder Cone.  I think it took me around 4 hours to do the 6.5-mile Prospect Peak round trip.  I had this trail just about all to myself, encountering only one other hiker just before reaching the Prospect Peak summit.

Up to the very last stage of the climb, the trail was a viewless trek through the trees and a little hard to follow in a few very short stretches, due to all the pine needles covering the ground.  It was impossible for me to see the peak through the trees—it is easily viewed from State Route 44—and therefore get a sense of my progress going up it.  At the very end, the trail curled around the southeast corner of Prospect Peak before taking me up to the top.   That is when I got my first good trailside views peering south to the north side of Lassen Peak.

Prospect Peak has a flat broad summit, with the peak marker laying toward its north end.  From there, I gazed out on the relatively flat country directly north of Lassen Volcanic National Park, cursing all the smoke from the wildfires that were blazing through Northern California’s Trinity Alps at the time, which blocked out any view of distant Mount Shasta.

While it was good to get yet another summit added to my list of peaks climbed, this hike was just ok.  Fortunately, my fourth and final day in the park was spent hiking up the more scenic and interesting nearby Cinder Cone (6,896 feet).  To do that, I headed back to Lassen’s Butte Lake entrance and stayed on the Cinder Cone trail.  The Cone is just under a mile from the trailhead parking spaces and it didn’t take long for me to see it come into view.

As the photo above shows, the trail makes a steep climb up the cinder Cone’s northwest slope to its rim.  I headed up volcanic sand, so for every step forward, I took half a step back, turning the hike into a real thigh burner.  Fortunately, both the distance and elevation gain weren’t very great and my sweat equity was amply rewarded after I reaching the Cinder Cone rim.  I peered down to the crater center and briefly contemplated taking one of several trails down to the bottom, but gave it a miss to avoid what would have been a hard climb back up.  I instead enjoyed the view of Lassen Peak off to southwest and the amazing Painted Dunes on the southeast side of the Cinder Cone.

Lassen Volcanic National Park has many things to offer besides opportunities to climb up its volcanoes.  After finishing the Cinder Cone hike, I headed back to the main northern entrance to the park and drove down 89 to visit the Bumpass Hell.  The parking lot for the short trail taking me to this heavily visited site is just beyond the parking lot for the Lassen Peak trailhead.  The route to the Bumpas Hell gave me good views of Lassen Peak, just to the north, and Mount Diller and Brokeoff Mountain to the west.  Visiting this place with its steam vents and boiling mud pots was a nice finale to a wonderful little mountain vacation.  It really beat the sulfur works, which I visited on my second day in the park, which were not very interesting and gave off the trademark rotten egg odor.  While visiting the Bumpass Hell, I bumped into a couple from Taiwan and their two children and had another opportunity to practice my oral Chinese. 

Getting to Lassen Volcanic National Park is very straightforward.  The quickest route for people coming from points north, south and west of it is to take I-5 to 44 and head east on it to 89, which gets you just about to Lassen’s north entrance.  If you’re coming from the east and heading west on I-80, turn off on 89 and follow it north up to the park.  I really like this drive because doing it takes one along the east side of the northern Sierra Nevada crest, where the range gets lower and lower and loses its alpine character.  It also goes through the eastern end of the Feather River Canyon, where 89 briefly merges with State Route 70.  I’ve done the full Feather Canyon route, which is truly a classic California drive. 

As mentioned earlier in this post, I car camped for my trip north of the park by the Old Station.  One problem with visiting Lassen and a likely reason why relatively few people do that is the limited number of camping spots and other accommodation outside of the par.  The small and non-descript burg of Chester on the north shore of Lake Almanor has a few motels, including a Best Western and several stores and restaurants.  I didn’t eat any of the latter, so I don’t know if they’re any good.  The southeast corner of Lassen is home to the Drakesbad Guest Ranch, which is very luxurious and very pricey. 

The best car camping options outside the park are the three campgrounds along 89 beside Hat Creek, which is reputed to have very good fly fishing.  I believe these campgrounds are first come, first serve and they hardly ever fill up.  Nearby Old Station consists of a few buildings, including a gas station with a convenience market selling ice and the only nearby dining establishment, JJ’s Café.  This restaurant is open Thursday-Sunday for breakfast and lunch.  I dined there and thought the breakfast was excellent, especially the delicious homemade biscuits, while the burgers were not bad.  The owner, however, who appeared to be a 40-something woman, told me she might be cutting back on the already limited number of days the place is open during the week.

One place to check out around Old Station is the Subway Cave.  This short lava tube is aptly named, as it probably could accommodate one or two subway trains.  Getting into the cave is free, but be sure to take a flashlight!  Yet more grist for the mill of geology enthusiasts!!

For those interested in further exploring this area, I have three recommendations of places to visit north of Lassen.  The first is to take the short drive from Old Station up to the Hat Creek Overlook.  To do that turn east on 44 from 89.  The turnoff for the lookout is on north side (left, if heading east) of the road right after it climbs up the Hat Creek Rim escarpment.  I visited there when departing from my campground and Old Station to return home.  The overlook has nice views of the mountains to the west in the nearby and badly named Thousand Lakes Wilderness—it has about a half dozen lakes, name notwithstanding.  I also saw the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), as it heads further north on its way ultimately to Canada.  Speaking of that trail, for some reason it got routed through the eastern part of Lassen Volcanic National Park, making it difficult for those using it to get over to and climb Lassen Peak and Brokeoff Mountain.  But the Cinder Cone is an easy and worthwhile side-trip from the PCT.   

My second tip, the falls on the McCloud River, takes one further up Rout 89 south of the small town of Shasta, which is where the road curves west to merge with I-5.  This stretch of the river has three waterfalls.  The park for the falls is on the west side of 89 and the turnoff into it is easy to miss.  I parked my car in the parking lot for the middle falls—each fall has its own parking lot—and enjoyed strolling down the paved and level foot path running alongside the bluff overlooking the river and its three falls.  In at least one of these falls, a trail takes visitors down to the pool at the bottom of it, where they take a dip and cool off.  And, yes, it gets pretty hot here during the summer!

My final suggested excursion is to Burney Falls, which is at the intersection of 89 and California State Route 299.  This wide waterfall drops over 120 feet down black basalt volcanic rock.  It is California’s most prolific waterfall, beating even the much higher and better-known Yosemite Falls.  Whereas the latter has a highly seasonal flow, that of Burney Falls is constant year around, as it’s fed by a large under aquifer. 

All in all, Lassen Volcanic National Park and its environs is an amazing and underappreciated area in what arguably remains, for all its faults, one of, if not the most scenic state in America.  Check it out!

That’s it for now, until this Mountain Man’s next hiking adventure story.  In the meantime, get up to the mountains and go hiking somewhere.  Take my word, doing that is extremely therapeutic and will really help center you psychologically!!