Dianna and I were married over memorial day weekend in Zion National Park in southwest Utah. We chose the venue and date because we have a bit of a national park fetish, and we wanted a three day weekend to visit more parks on our anniversaries (1st = Zion NP, 2nd = Crater Lake NP and Redwoods NP, 3rd = Olympic NP). This year, with the arrival of Zane, we needed to stay a little closer to home, and chose to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park, which is about 5 hours away, east of Redding, CA.Dianna managed, somehow, to fenaegle a just-canceled-room at a bed and breakfast in the booming metropolis of Shingletown, CA, which turned out to be a hidden gem. On the first day we drove to the NW entrance of the park at Lake Manzanita, where we stopped by the bookstore to get the details on what hikes were open and what were closed. We learned that unfortunately all the cool thermal stuff (this is a volcanic park, after all) was still under a heavy blanket of snow (not the first time we have run into this problem), and none of those hikes were open. Instead we opted to strap Zane into the Baby Bjørn and hike up to Crags Lake, which we later learned was lacking in the part about the lake. We met a couple atop the hike who had been hiking there every memorial day for 20 years, and this was the first time they had ever seen the lake dry. We hiked back down, and drove through the western half of the park.
To this point we were having a pretty good time, but frankly thought that Lassen was a little on the lame side. Don't get me wrong, it was very pretty, but generally national parks blow you away with otherworldly beauty (2000 foot shear cliffs, impossibly balanced rocks, huge trees, et cetera), which Lassen so far appeared to lack. We figured that at least the bed and breakfast was cool.
The next morning we decided to drive to the other side of the park to the Cinder Cone hike, which required us to do 7 miles each direction of driving on fireroads with our Prius. I was laughing on the inside for the entire drive, as I remember reading in Harper's that 87% of Ford Explorers have never been off road. The hike started off alongside the Fantastic lava beds (I didn't make that up, that's actually what it's called. It was indeed fantastic), and slowly climbed up to Cinder Cone.
The hike is listed as 'strenuous' in the trail guide, because it gains 750 feet in a little more than half a mile... and it's like climbing uphill on a beach, as the ground is basically sand. Although we had not planned on trying to get to the top with an infant strapped to my chest, on the hike to the base of Cinder Cone I managed to convince Dianna that it probably wasn't so steep, and we should give it a shot, as we could turn around whenever we decided it was too tough. She first responded by asking me if I had been sniffing glue in the parking lot. Ultimately her sense of adventure kicked in and she said sure, let's go for it.
Then the trail went straight up, and we slowly but surely made progress towards the summit.
Zane had really been digging touching the tree bark and pine cones and was awake for the majority of the hike. Once we got to the top we hung out for a while, ate sandwiches and checked out the view while Zane breastfed. The last part is because the bottle of breastmilk that we had stuffed in my pack conveniently turned itself into cheese on the hike, and looked too horrifying to feed to him. There are a ton of pictures of the hike here.
While the two of them were busy, I stared at the map, and realized that we could loop the hike by going down the backside of Cinder Cone. We were somewhat shocked to learn that the back was steeper than the front. The pictures don't do it justice, but it was crazy steep. We took our time and got down safely, and made it back to the car without being reported to child protective services. If anyone is planning on going to Lassen, this hike was really cool, and redeemed the lameness of the previous day.
It was a great weekend. Pictures are more better, go check them out.
