CALIFORNIA
Lassen Volcanic National Park - Brokeoff Mountain
The nice thing about camping is waking up with the sunrise! So we had no issues getting up early this morning. I brought eggs, breakfast sausages and instant coffee for us so we had a nice big and hearty breakfast.
Although I didn’t pack olive oil or salt so that’s something to get for our next camping trip haha.
One annoying thing about this campsite is that they placed this huge concrete table on an incline so the whole thing is tilted. This made cooking on it kind of annoying and stuff was always rolling off.
Anyways, for our hike today we planned to tackle our second mountain peak of the weekend. Brokeoff Mountain is the second tallest peak in Lassen, second to Lassen Peak of course. However, the hike is a bit longer at 7.4 miles. The description of the trail also hails it as the most scenic and beautiful in the park.
Note that us three are pretty experienced hikers and decently in shape. Only one of us live somewhere at elevation. Hiking at elevation is damn hard, especially with steep climbs. Listen to your body, eat good food, drink a ton of water, and take frequent breaks. Even we found ourselves stopping often.
The trailhead is at the southern entrance of the park, before you even pay at the entrance. The sign does say to pay first and come back, or put your National Park pass on the dash.
Compared to Lassen Peak this is MUCH more green. There’s trees and creeks along the first two miles up which offer shade and cool breezes. It’s also much more gentle of an incline since there’s more mileage.
The peak is not shaded though which is a bummer. It’s pretty flat at the top which would make it perfect for a long lunch if it wasn’t so hot. Also the air currents seem to blow every butterfly, fly and mosquito to the top so we were having trouble with that.
At least butterflies are pretty.
But the views, man! Cannot complain. While Lassen Peak has nice views at the top, Brokeoff Mountain has far less obstruction in its view and you can pretty much stand in one place and turn 360 degrees to see everything.
Another view of Shasta:
I think this is our friend Mount Lassen:
We headed back down and used the opportunity of being at the edge of the park to go to the nearby camping store and pick up firewood, marshmallows and other things we’d missed while packing. The closest was Lassen Mineral Lodge. It says it has gas but it DOES NOT!
The closest gas station is 30-40 miles away. Make sure to fill up on your way into the park. We needed gas so we ended up driving 30 minutes to Chester to find a gas station.
With our supplies and gas we headed back to the campground and did our dunk in the lake. We took some time to also lay out on towels and read our books to decompress.
For dinner we fried up some sausages on the grill and were still hungry so we heated up more chili. Then we played cards, roasted marshmallows and took the rainfly off the tent so we could fall asleep looking at the stars!