Today we celebrated Father’s Day by hiking up a volcano!
We all made it to the top and Ian said this was his favourite hike of the trip so far…but we’ll get to this in a minute.
The morning started off slowly with nobody wanting to get out of bed. We slept with the outer door to the trailer open and just the screen door closed overnight so we could enjoy the crisp mountain air while we slept. We didn’t anticipate the temperature getting quite so crispy and it required a bit of effort to wrestle people out of their warm cocoons of blankets this morning.
When we finally got everyone up and at ’em, we headed out for (what we had planned to be) a leisurely tour of the park. Obviously things didn’t go entirely to plan…but in a good way.
Our first lookout was Chaos Jumbles, where huge rock slides dominate the landscape.
Next we stopped to see Hot Rock, which was a gigantic rock that was blasted out of Lassen Volcano during its last eruption about 115 years ago. It landed in the Devastation Area and was reported to remain hot to the touch for a week after the eruption. We also walked along the interpretative path through the area devastated by mudslides when the heat of the last eruption melted the snow and caused massive avalanches.
We learned some new things about lava today. First, we saw California’s youngest rock, 115 years old since it was formed by lava in Mount Lassen’s last eruption.
We also learned about quenched blobs which are when you can see chunks or blobs of one type of lava rock incased in a different looking type of lava rock. What we’re seeing is masses of hotter molten rock that become quickly solidified when injected into magma of a lower temperature.
Finally, we learned about puzzle rocks that have partially shattered but still fit together perfectly like a puzzle.
Our initial plan for our next activity, on the advice of the park ranger, was to stop at Lassen Peak Trailhead to see the snow and a good view of the mountain standing tall at 10,457 feet. This was a perfectly nice view - see…
It was at this point that Liam expressed the intense desire to hike to the summit. It’s ONLY 4 km he said, it’s ONLY 2,000 ft of elevation he said. It’s my dream, he said. And this is how our relaxing day of sightseeing turned into us climbing up an enormous volcano.
It was a very hard hike - up, up, up, and then up some more. Up twenty-two steep switchbacks. Up higher than every other mountain in this very mountainous region. Did I mention that we climbed up? A lot.
The boys were incredible. They are fantastic hikers. Zero complaints, zero monkey business, just one step after another. It took us four hours, about three hours up and one back down. We all made it in one piece, though I strongly advise the parks service to consider putting a tea house at the summit to motivate unsuspecting ladies like me who get roped into this adventure in the future.
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| Our Liam at the summit. So proud of him. |
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| Ali and the volcano’s caldera. |
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| Team us. We made it! |
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| Special mountain flower that grows in really hard places. |
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| OMG so tired. |
After a late lunch when we were back at the mountain’s base, we headed in to visit the Sulphur Works, one of the park’s smaller hydrothermal areas. After Yellowstone and given the closure of the area’s boardwalk because the landscape was changing too fast to keep the trail safe, we found the Sulphur Works very underwhelming. We saw a bit of steam from the road and a bubbling pool but that’s about it. I am looking forward to our hike to the park’s larger hydrothermal area, Bumpass Hell, tomorrow.
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| This is the mountain that we hiked. |
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| Emerald lake. |
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| Bubbling pool. |
We enjoyed our scenic drive back to the campground with both gorgeous and diverse landscapes and unique, vibrant flowers.
It was one heck of a Father’s Day today. Certainly one for the books. It isn’t every dad who agrees to hike up a volcano on their special day - I think we definitely lucked out with ours. Happy Father’s Day Ian and all the other fantastic dads out there! We appreciate all you do for your family.
