RETIREMENT TRIP #7

Mountains of Volcanoes

                                                                      We’ve already been as far west as we are going on this trip and today we’ll be as far south as we’re going to go… once we reach Chester, California.  At 9:00 a.m. the temperature had already surpassed 82 degrees.  It was going to be a warm one.

“I’m tired of the heat,” complained the desk clerk when Andy checked out.  “I’m ready for summer to end.”

Andy is dwarfed by the 300-ton
Hot Rock from the Lassen
Volcano eruption of 1915.

“It will be cooler for us,” Andy told me in the car.  “Lassen is much higher in elevation.”

Temperature drops three to five degrees every 1,000-foot rise in elevation.  The highway climbed consistently as we headed south.

Hot Rock was ejected from the volcano core on May 19, 1915, when Lassen erupted.  Local resident B.F. Loomis said this 300-ton piece of dacite lava was still sizzling in water 40 hours after being shot from the volcano five miles away.

The mud flows from 1915 are apparent in this photograph
of Lassen Volcano that shows the side of the mountain
blown out by the force of the explosions.



The spot called the Devastated Area was the site of two huge mudflows when Lassen erupted on May 19 and then blew its core on May 22, 1915.
B.F. Loomis photographed the area in between the two eruptions, the second considerably larger than the first.
Rocks, spewed from the volcano and landing here by force or carried by the melted snow, are of two basic ages:  either 27,000 year-old red and grey dacite from when the volcano first formed or 1915-formed black dacite and pumice from the exploding lava.

The lush grasses of Kings Meadow
are fed by Kings Creek.



Rocky and barren, the slopes of
Lassen stand out against the sky.

Kings Creek meanders through Kings Creek Meadow and Upper Kings Creek Meadow.  In 1860 James M. King lived here and ran horses and mules in the area.  It may have been a lake at one time, but now the forest of red fir and a few mountain hemlocks is encroaching.

Through the trees, the glacial waters of
Lake Helen sparkle in the bright sun.

A roadside pull-off above 8,510 feet showed the barren, mud-scoured slope of Lassen.  Few trees have taken a foothold since the 1915 eruptions.

Rounding a bend in the road just past the Lassen Summit Trailhead, we saw Lake Helen beneath us.  Strong winds, definitely cooled by the Lassen glaciers, rocked the car.   Wind gusts rippled the waters of Lake Helen.  We carefully climbed over the rocks down to the lake.  When the breeze subsided, Lassen’s peak reflected across the lake.



When winds settle down, the water of Lake Helen reflects
Lassen Peak at midday.

“I can see people scaling the summit,” called Andy from the water’s edge.“See that small outcropping just above the tree line?  There are four bodies moving.”


He was right.  Probably half way up the Lassen Summit, I could see flashes and a moving spot of red.

At an elevation of 8,164 feet, Lake Helen is frozen over seven or eight months of the year.  Even in the summer, the temperature at the bottom of the lake is 39 degrees.  A glacial lake, Lake Helen was probably formed by the cutting action of a glacier more than 500 feet thick.

Every pullout offers spectacular views
of the rugged volcanoes.

The lake was named by Major Pierson B. Reading in honor of Helen Tanner Brodt, the first woman known to ascend Lassen Peak.  In the winter, snow accumulations of 20 to 50 feet are common here.
Another pullout had picnic tables and giant ponderosas downed by winds of earlier days.  We stopped for apples and more pictures of the massive peaks around us, all rugged slopes of basalt, pumice and ash—all quiet volcanoes.

Volcanic peaks like Brokeoff Mountain
and Mount Dillar surround Lassen in the
Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Lassen Peak was named for Peter Lassen, a Danish pioneer, who repeatedly used the mountain as a landmark in 1848, to blaze a roundabout emigrant trail from Black Rock, Nevada, to his deer Creek Rancho Bosquejo in the Sacramento Valley.

Mathias Supan began extracting sulphur here in 1865.  He developed a series of “mine medicines” which he sold in a drugstore in Red Bluff.

Dacite boulders tossed from volcano in the 1915 eruption
 and downed trees from strong winds add to the beauty of
this rugged area of northern California.

Sulphur Works marked a site of an old hot springs when T. M. Boarman and Dr. Milton Supan tried to develop the sulphur and clay potential of the area by appealing to an active tourist trade around 1940. Some of the acidic thermal water was used for hot baths.  Originally the land was filed as a mining claim.

Sulphur Works rests near the core of an ancient volcano named Mount Tehama.  This ancient volcano, active 400,000 to 600,000 years ago, measured 11 miles across and towered to 11,500 feet, 1,000 feet taller than Mount Lassen.  Although it is long gone since it collapsed upon itself and formed a huge caldera, the hydrothermal system that fed it is connected to the same magma system that fires the magma pockets of Sulphur Works.



The mud pot of boiling dirt
literally explodes in huge bubbles. 

The rotten-egg smell permeates the air.  It affirms the presence of hydrogen sulfide gas, a forerunner in the formation of sulphur.  Heat generated underground in magma pockets warms groundwater to the boiling point.  The water bubbles and steams upward through cracks until it reaches the surface.  All of the park’s hydrothermal systems are connected to this same volcanic boiler.

Cold Boiling Lake rests peacefully in a
meadow with only a small stream
bubbling in at the far end.

Andy headed back down the mountain for a hike at Cold Boiling Lake.
The trail, .8 mile with a 200-foot rise, led to a meadow with emerald-green water.
At one end, a spring bubbled up from the mud.  About half full, Cold Boiling Lake probably boils and steams a lot more in the winter.


Unusual fungus lives on
the dead tree snag.

A couple ducks waded in the grasses on the far shore, and a Stellar Jay poked near a rotting tree.  Along the trail we photographed a standing dead snag covered in fungus.  Cold Boiling Lake was an interesting trail.

Forest fire destroyed a whole section of the lower slope of Lassen.  The National Park Service is less likely to fight fires now unless the blaze threatens structures.

Fire replenishes, but here
the destruction is apparent.

As part of nature, fire serves to clear the forest floor and return nutrients to the soil.  But it certainly ruins the landscape.
 We parked near the Manzanita Lake Entrance Station to follow the trail around Manzanita Lake.  It was here six years ago in the late afternoon that snow-covered Lassen reflected in the cold lake waters along with the brilliantly-colored foliage of the season.

Lassen rises majestically above Manzanita Lake.

The trail passes through Manzanita brush, open meadows and ponderosa pine forest with alder thickets by the lake.  The green of late summer still predominated, but the views of Lassen Peak and nearby Pilot Pinnacle, 8886 feet; Mount Dillar, 9089 feet; and Brokeoff Mountain, 9235 feet, were breathtaking nevertheless.

Lassen rises 4,625 feet above Manzanita Lake to an elevation of 10,457 feet.  The summit notch in the 1917 crater and the black tongue extending down on the right is the lava flow that poured out as molten dacite on May 19, 1915.  Andy nailed this one again.  This trail is best at the end of the day.

Every view from the lakeshore is picture perfect.

The town of Chester caters to summer tourists.  Antlers Motel had no vacancy, but we’re checked in for more than one night.  And we’ll go back to the Burger Depot for made-to-order burgers and onion rings.  Smothered with mushrooms, Swiss cheese and grilled onions, these burgers were something special.  We even chatted with the owner for 15 minutes.  That’s the “something special” about small town stays.