Volcanoes

 

Leaving Nevada, we headed back into California and traveled over the infamous Donner Pass, near Truckee, CA. The unbelievable amount of snow, at the pass, added to the realism of the story of the lost Donner party; the wagon train that got off course and were stranded in the snow for 5 months in 1857. Eighty-one people were trapped. Forty-five survived but only after resorting to murder and cannibalism. Trying not to dwell too much on that sobering bit of American history, we pushed on to Living Springs Campground outside Lassen Volcanic National Park. We knew our visit here would be in the shoulder season of the park’s opening but this year’s unprecedented snow has made the area a bit of a ghost town. We decided to embrace the solitude and enjoy having a national park all to ourselves.

All four types of volcanoes, found in the entire world, are represented in Lassen; shield, plug dome, cinder cone and composite. We made our way to Lassen Peak, a plug dome volcano whose jagged features looked smooth due to the blankets of snow. Mt Lassen is the southern most active volcano in the Cascade Range and its last eruption was in 1915. I’ve always assumed a volcanic eruption is almost always a bad thing but a number of atmospheric scientists have attributed the cooler temperatures and increased rain and snowfall this year, that have drastically improved California’s drought status, to the 2022 eruption of an undersea volcano near China. 

Anyway, after hiking around Manzanita Lake and checking out the campground and camp store, we understood why a large section of the park remains closed indefinitely. But at least a partial pathway has been cleared to the camp store ice machine!