Adventures to Lassen Volcanic National Park

This week Jim and I took a driving tour of Lassen Volcanic Park. If we were 20 years younger we could have done one or more of the hiking tours, but if we would have walked one now, they would have found us dead along the trail. :-)

There was so much to see, such as the cinder cone and the lava beds and many lakes one could only get to by hiking in.....so we had to forgo these. The driving tour was a beautiful, 29 mile drive and reached an elevation of 8,512 feet. The diverse road tour took us to the sulfur active hydrothermal area along with the fantastic panoramic views of the lakes and the mountain, itself. We could not see the last part of the tour because they were doing road construction, so we missed seeing the chaos crags and the devastated area. These areas show the combined mud flow and the avalanche destruction, typical of volcanic eruptions.

In one of the pictures you will see a huge rock (boulder) that appears to be balancing on edge. This boulder is not indigenous to this area and was placed here by glaciers that have carved canyons and dotted the area with lakes and clear water streams.

The last eruption began in 1914 and launched a three year outburst, the largest was in May of 1915 when the peak blew a huge mushroom shaped cloud of ash over 30,000 feet into the air.

We hope you have enjoyed another view of this wonderful earth, through our eyes and photos.