With Mom in Florida for two weeks and daughter home from school for the
summer, Jackie had the option of joining me for a roadtrip or staying
home by herself. She chose to hang out with me for the three days. I
picked an itinerary that was more to her liking - trailed peaks with
modest mileage and elevation gain, some drive-ups, and because she wanted
some experience with crampons, a last day to climb Mt. Lassen via that
means. I haven't room for two of us to sleep in the Jeep so I arranged for
us to stay at the Hat Creek Lodge in Old Station on SR44 north of Lassen
National Park. We were up early at 4a to give us more daylight in the
mountains, but that turned out to be pretty unecessary. Even if we'd
started two hours later we would have had tons of daylight for what we
(Jackie) could accomplish. So close to the summer solstice, daylight is
hardly at a premium.
Crater Peak/Magee Peak
Crater is a P2K while the other is merely a bonus on the way that you can't
help but go over on your way to Crater. The trade route starts at
on the southwest side of the old volcano, about 3.5mi on trail
to the highpoint. The official trail ends at Magee Peak, but a use trail
has developed for much of the extra distance to Crater Peak. We arrived at
the TH shortly before 10a and were quickly
after changing into
our boots. The weather was simply delightful, about 61F with a very light
breeze - tshirts would do just fine. The trail is well-maintained for the
most part, though there were probably half a dozen downed logs that need to
be cleared near the start. The trail begins by climbing up through a dry
forest, pleasant enough, with views opening as one climbs higher and the
trees begin to thin. Lassen dominates
, about 17mi to the southwest,
snow covering most of its northern aspects we were exposed to. Upon reaching
the crater rim, one gets a first view of Crater Peak about 2/3mi to
. There is
here with another trail that drops northeast into
the crater and down to Magee and Everett Lakes, but today that route crosses
a rather steep snowfield as it descends from the rim. Our trail had very
on it, just enough for making , but not enough
to be a hindrance.
We took about 1.5hrs to cover the 3mi to
where we paused .
There is an ammo box here filled with loose
pages, so many that I didn't bother to look at them or sign in. Far to the
northwest rises the far higher Mt. Shasta, but Lassen is the more impressive
peak in this area. We took another half hour to
to Crater Peak,
arriving around noon. There were here,
one left by
John Vitz in 2001, another by Richard Carey sometime later, and a third
whose details I forget though we signed it. The summit made for a nice place
for a while, with very nice views in all directions.
Not surprisingly, our return
went a bit faster, getting us
by 1:45p, a nice,
moderate outing, we both thought.
West Prospect Peak
This P1K is located just outside the Lassen NP boundary, south of SR44,
a drive-up of about 11mi on gravel roads that any vehicle could navigate.
On the drive from Crater Peak, we went through a can of Pringles and quite
a bit of salami that we had with us. Jackie was helping me navigate for
much of the way (learning to use the GPSr), but fell into a coma before
we reached the lookout at the summit. She stirred little when we finally reached
the top where I got out to walk around and take
, Lassen ,
now only 10mi to the southwest. She
mumbled something like, "How was it?" when I got back in the Jeep before
falling asleep again. I think she gets to count this one since we pretty
much drove to the highpoint. :-)
Badger Mountain
On the way down from West Prospect, I noted on the GPSr that there was a
nearby Badger Mtn, not quite a drive-up, but almost. Plus, it had 800ft of
prominence - a nice bonus. I headed in that direction on some rougher roads
that woke Jackie temporarily while we were scraping manzanita. I got within
1/3mi of the summit on the east side and asked Jackie if she wanted to go for
a walk. She did not. While she continued her slumber, I
to the highpoint, across a
(no real bushwhacking) and
up a short slope to wander around the summit ridge looking for a likely
highpoint. There were no views under the forested canopy. I picked out a
likely-looking boulder on which to leave with
.
Some random visitor will probably be surprised to find it years from now.
Jackie was when I
half an hour later,
and still napping after I'd checked into our motel in Old Station. Boy,
this girl can sleep the sleep of the dead, that's for sure...
Sugarloaf Peak
I wasn't quite done yet. After we'd showered, dined, and lazed about the
motel some, I noticed it wasn't yet 6:30pm and there was still more than
two hours of daylight. I looked over at Jackie and said, "I'm going to go
back out for a hike in case you'd like to join me." She looked at me a
little concerned, "I've already clocked out..." I let
her know I was only asking as a courtesy, and headed out by myself.
Across the highway from the motel rises Sugarloaf Peak, a small volcanic
cone and a P1K. I hadn't done much looking at it ahead of time, so my
driving by GPSr was a bit of a crap shoot. The obvious roads that would
lead me by the shortest route to the west side of the peak were right
across the highway in a residential neighborhood on Sugarloaf Ln (aptly
named, I thought). I drove in following
the road depicted on the GPSr, only to find it dead-ended in a couple
of the neighbors' yards. As I paused to consider my situation, I noticed
a neighbor woman looking sharply at me from her fence like I was some sort
of burglar trying to figure out how to rip off her neighbors. I drove over
to her with the window down to let her know I was just trying to get to a
peak, not rob her friends. She warmed up after that and directed me back
out to the highway and then to the dirt forest road about a mile to the
west. With a bit of effort and about 5mi of driving, I found my way via
various roads to what looked like the closest approach to the summit, just
about a mile away at a saddle on the west side.
Good enough. I parked the Jeep in the bushes off the
road and from there.
It wasn't a very good hike and Jackie was wise to have stayed at the
motel. She would have regretted it, I'm sure. For starters, it's an old
cinder cone.
There seems to be fields upon fields of loose lava rocks, softball to
basketball sized. Then there was a fire a few years ago. There are snags
everywhere and lots of charred branches that blacken anything that touches
them. Then there was the brush that seemed to
wherever the
lava rocks relented. The upper third of the mountain (at least on the west
side I climbed from) was steep and layered in
. The
combination made for a mostly tedious scramble that took me a full hour
just to go a mile. Whew. I reached
after 8p, thinking I might be
cutting it a bit too close to sunset. There was a register there in some
rusty nested cans, left by
, whose registers I'd come across
on previous trips to the Shasta area. I took photos of the various pages
before heading back down. It was 8:45p by the time I returned and it would
be fairly dark before I had driven back to the motel. Good times...
Continued...