CALIFORNIA
Lassen Volcanic National Park - Lassen Peak
I recently turned 30 and I knew for my birthday I wanted to get some camping and hiking time in. I’ve been to Lassen before but on a motorcycle roadtrip where we didn’t do much besides the scenic drive and swimming in a lake.
Lassen’s snow takes a long time to melt and mid-July is in fact the best time to try to go for high elevation trails to be open.
For camping we chose the North Summit Lake campground. The campsite is on the exact same lake I swam in last time and is very conveniently in the middle of the park. For doing the hikes we had planned, this worked out pretty well. Plus it’s really nice to be able to take a dip in cool water after being sweaty and covered in sunscreen all day.
Initially I planned to hike Bumpass Hell our first day since we’d need to drive 4 hours from San Francisco first and I thought we’d be tired. Sadly Bumpass Hell was closed still while we were there. My friend convinced me we could do Lassen Peak Friday afternoon instead.
So we packed up the car and left San Francisco around 7:30 AM and made our way north. We had little issue with traffic and brought snacks and fixings for lunch. We got to the Lassen Peak trailhead around 1:30 PM and made our way up.
Temperatures in the park at this elevation were hovering in the 80s. That’s pretty brutal for this hike which is mostly uncovered and is a series of switchbacks up the mountain. At 5 miles roundtrip, that means nearly 2k feet of elevation gain in the first 2.5 miles.
We saw more children than I would expect on the trail but I’m not sure I would really recommend this for kids. The gravel can be slippery and there are some sheer cliff edges.
Decent amount of snow still off to the side of the trail – thankfully not a lot on the trail itself.
And nearly panoramic view at the peak. There’s a nice viewpoint a few hundred feet before the peak, as you’ll need to scramble up some rocks and boulders to get to the very top.
After huffing and puffing my way up the trail and then doing a rock scramble it was really nice to eat some lunch and drink some gatorade.
You can just barely make out Mt. Shasta in the distance:
The way back down was much easier, basically just roll down the mountain. We drove the remaining 20 minutes to the campsite and set up camp.
With that out of the way we immediately changed into our swimsuits and hit the lake with some Whiteclaws. A day well spent!
Before we left I had prepped some food for this trip. Cooking while camping is fun and not that hard, but I thought it’d be nice to have some turkey chili in tupperware containers. So we just reheated that and opened a bottle of wine.
We didn’t have time to stop for wood for the fire before our hike this afternoon. If you’re coming into the park from the south like we were, it’s best to get wood in the town 15 minutes away. The park camp store is on the north side of the park and would’ve entailed an hour long drive to get there.
We ended up just scavenging twigs and some cut wood from around the campground. With the big fires of 2019 there’s a lot of cut down trees.