Caving

The underground portion of the Tour of the Vocanoes involved caving in lava tubes, which is a most entertaining way to escape the summer heat aboveground.

We stopped at Subway Cave just outside of the Lassen park boundary as sort of a warm-up cave.  This is a fairly benign place to explore, and gave us a chance to remember how to stumble about in the dark.

It also reminded me just how difficult it is to take pictures in the dark when you don't want to spend any extra time setting things up.

One can figure out how to hold the flashlights strategically.  Ooooh, spooky shadow.

Lava tubes have quite a different feel than other water-carved caves that we've been in.  Often the walls are quite smooth, and of course there are no stalactites or stalagmites.

Yay -- we found the exit!  Time for a hug.

When we got to Lava Beds, we knew that things would be a bit more difficult, with passageways that required some stooping and crawling.  Thus, I got to wear my stylin' old climbing helmet.

Nim and Chad had new helmets.  Can't you feel the style just radiating out from us?

After getting our permit and walking through their shoe decontamination trough to make sure we weren't going to spread any white-nose fungus to the bats, we set out to explore the cave loop.  On the surface, you can tell that you are in volcano territory (note the basalt on the ground and the cinder cone in the distance), but at first glance you have little insight into the maze that lies below.

Aha -- what's that?  A hole in the ground!

There are some places where lava tubes are close enough to the surface to have fallen in on themselves, leading to a series of natural bridges.

We had a listing of the caves with indications of which ones were open and what they would likely require in terms of motion and navigagion, but ended up poking our noses into pretty much anything that was open.  Once inside, the temptation to explore was pretty strong; at times we squirmed through side passageways enough to pop out onto the surface like prairie dogs at the entrance to an entirely different cave that the one we went in from.

Some of the caves had clearly defined paths to follow.

Others required you to find your own best route.

From the pictures it should be clear that we usually went into larger holes that the ones we came out of.

The ceiling of one of the caves had some visually interesting yellow bacterial mats that glittered in the light from our flashlights.

Another cave had hold graffiti from 1892.  Chad spotted this; I would have missed it entirely.

Nim was quite the intrepid explorer,

though she did find the occasional nook in which to rest

while Chad or I explored side passages to determine whether they went anywhere interesting.

At one point, it occurred to me that knee pads would have been nice.  The rough texture on the floor is just how the lava solidified, and in places it was very sharp.

It looks like dried mud, but in reality is hard, pointy basalt.  Ouch.

In some places, the walls of the lava tubes were smooth, but in other places they were covered in lavacicles -- small drips formed when lava drips solidified as they tried to ooze off the wall.

 At the end of the day, we quite enjoyed finding the openings where the sun shone down in!

Devil's Kitchen

One of the nice things about the Warner Valley campground at Lassen is that it is right at the trailhead to Devil's Kitchen, an active geothermal area.  Naturally we had to explore it!

I was quite obviously reminded of some of the geothermal sites we saw in New Zealand a few years back.  First we hiked through a verdant meadow

to find a wacky steaming landscape.

There was a bit of a duelling-cameras game going on.

This being the US, they have rules and signs.

I mostly stayed on the trail.

 Happy family fun hike.

Homes away from home

I'm still working up to the "real" posts...  In the meantime, here is a glimpse of our many homes away from home over the course of the volcano road trip.

The trusty Truckster.  It got us through many miles, including quite a bit of dirt, and we didn't even need the sand plates (even though we had them!)

We were lucky and got one of the last first-come-first-served campsites at Warner Valley on the south side of Lassen.  This campground is supposedly normally pretty empty, but it was oddly busy -- likely because the main road through to the main big campground on the other side was not yet open.  One entertaining feature of this campground was that it was right on the PCT, so we got to watch many long-distance backpackers traipse through.

Vegetables that didn't get eaten before we left were often featured at dinner.  I had no real food plan other than to eat the random stuff that was thrown into the food bags after Chad's party.

We had a few sausages too, to stave off the kid's Sad Face.

Despite the complete adequacy and comfort of our setup, Chad still yearned for other peoples' adventure vans and stalked them through the trees.

A typical picnic lunch.

Pocky is always good...and fun!

We had an absolutely delightful first-come-first-serve campsite at Lava Beds.  They even had a bathroom with flush toilets and a light that would come on at night.  (Almost didn't feel like camping to me...)

More veg.  We *finally* used up the last of the giant yellow zucchini from one of Chad's coworker's garden in a delicious zucchini and parsley pasta alfredo.

Deluxe lunch bought at the lodge at Crater Lake.  Note the soda label.

After several days of camping, we ended up in a little rental cabin in La Pine so that we would have a chance to take showers and do some laundry.  This was somewhat odd due to the sulfurous well water in these parts, but the cabin was nice otherwise and was adjacent to a state park with mountain biking :)

You can't stay in a cabin in a small Western town without checking out the local diner -- in this case, the Red Rooster.   It was a classic.

After a few days of relative luxury, it was back to camping, this time at Cove Palisades State Park.  One feature of Oregon state parks that I was not aware of is that they all have free showers.  This one had a camp store with ice cream bars too!  (Most appreciated as it was about 100 degrees out in the afternoon)

Once nice feature of camping is that there is usually time to relax and read in the afternoon after the day's adventures.

By the last morning of camping, our food supplies were a little thin:  thus, grilled Nutella sandwiches for breakfast.  Oddly good.

On our way back to civilization, we found ourselves in Burgerville territory.  You can't beat their seasonal Walla Walla onion rings and fresh blackberry milkshakes in July.  The burgers are tasty too.

As we approached my parents' house, we were welcomed by the brand-new Castle Rock sign at the entrance into town by the river.  Chad didn't catch any fish despite the fact that they were clearly advertised...

 And, last but not least, we had an easy stop at the Valley of the Rogue State Park to break up the drive on the way back home.  I knew we wouldn't want to set up camp at this point, so had reserved a yurt.  And I like saying the word yurt.  Yurt yurt yurt.

Yurt!

Tour of the Volcanoes: The Mountains

The notion for our summer vacation this year was to do a road trip along the east side of the string of Cascade volcanoes up to my parents' house in Washington, camping, exploring, hiking, mountain biking, and caving along the way.  As a starting overview, here are some of the mountains that kept peeking out at us from the horizon.

The original plan involved climbing Mt. Lassen.  As you can see, there was still quite a bit of snow on the mountain -- in fact the main road through the park (and incidentally to the trailhead) was still closed.  While we *could* have embarked on a major crampon-and-ice-axe expedition, we decided there were plenty of other things to fit into the trip, and thus have to save the summit for another time.

We didn't actually get that close to Shasta on the way up, but there was an occasional good viewpoint.

Shasta in the clouds, on the way to Lava Beds.

[Medicine Lake Volcano/Lava Beds pictures saved for another post, since it is a shield volcano rather than a big pointy one.]

We weren't originally going to stop at Crater Lake since it is largely a tourist zoo and the few good trails there hadn't yet been opened due to snow -- but it turned out to be on the shortest route over to a trail we wanted to mountain bike on further north.  What you can't tell from this picture is just the sheer number of people and cars everywhere, compounded by all the road work they were still doing to recover from the large amount of snow this winter.  Ugh.  It did make for a reasonable lunch stop once we found a place to park.

Incidentally, I now really want to climb Mt. Thielson, a dramatic peak just north of Crater Lake.  You can apparently see into Crater Lake from the summit as well as views of all the other nearby mountains.

We saw many views of Mt Bachelor and Three Sisters from the area we explored for a few days just south of Bend.

Three Sisters from Paulina Peak/Newberry Crater.  (There's a whole post coming about Newberry Crater National Monument -- it is the same sort of lake-filled volcanic caldera as Crater Lake, but with more nooks and crannies to explore and fewer hordes of tourists -- yay!)

As we moved to the area just north of Bend, Mt. Jefferson started to appear seemingly everywhere.  I wasn't really aware of this peak before this trip, as this volcano is not really visible from I-5 (the route we always took through Oregon when I was a kid).  It is a delightfully pointy stratovolcano :)

from the maze of dirt roads south of Lake Billy Chinook

at the head of the Metolius River

from the Tam-a-Lau trail at Cove Palisades.  Note the most excellent columnar basalt in the foreground.

Jefferson isn't the only super-pointy volcano around; Mt. Hood seems quite similar to the untrained eye.   (I misidentified Jefferson as Hood from the top of Paulina Peak, only to be corrected by a passer-by -- this is really when I consciously realized that Jefferson existed!)

Of course, once up in WA, we had opportunities to see St. Helens,

Adams,

and Rainier.

On the way back home down I-5, we caught glimpses of most of the peaks.  I particularly liked this shot of Shasta out the back window of the truck.

I miss having a pet volcano always on the horizon...