Hikers have been eagerly awaiting the reopening of the Lassen Peak Trail, which closed in 2009 after a tragic accident. In the years since, the park has been rebuilding and…
If you've ever driven on Highway 5 through Northern California, you know Black Butte. Despite Mt Shasta dominating the view from a distance, when you're in between the two cities…
Somewhere around ten years ago David and I spent a day at Ahjumawi Lava Springs State Park. This is a small and quiet park that is only accessible via boat…
Last weekend we visited Thousand Lakes Wilderness, nestled in the volcanic terrain between Lassen National Park and Burney Falls. While we're familiar with much of the local area the wilderness…
One of my favorite places to visit in mid-spring is Lava Beds National Monument, a remote pocket of land at the California-Oregon border. It is covered with the remains of…
I’m going to let you in on a secret. It comes in two parts. The first is this: Lava Beds National Monument. The second part is this: Easter Weekend.
Lava Beds sits just south of the California/Oregon border. The nearest town big enough for a Walmart is Klamath Falls, Oregon, about 40 miles to the north. Getting to the park from the major population centers of California involves a long, long drive, made even longer in winter by closure of the southern route due to snow. It is surrounded by horseradish farms, the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, and the flanks of the enormous Medicine Lake Shield Volcano and related lava flows.
Lava Beds offers a unique experience. The main attractions are the hundreds of lava tube caves formed by the different flows off of the Medicine Lake Volcano. The labelled caves on the Lava Beds park map are generally developed. This means that they have ladders, cleared sections through the jumbles of rock, or walkways. They do not have lights – bring your own! The backcountry caves, however, are not developed and usually require a bit more scrambling or technical skills. Lava tubes in general are fairly easy to navigate, so advanced caving skills are not usually needed. Good lighting, head protection, and a lack of fear of the dark and tight spaces are the most important things to have in a lava tube.
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We headed up to Lava Beds for the cold easter weekend with Paige and Dave and their kids. It was a fun and simple trip - car camping in the…
Since both of our employers were kind enough to give us July 3rd off in addition to Independence Day, David and I headed up to Northern California for a four-day weekend of caving and hiking. The crowds were sparse thanks to the mid-week holiday, and we were able to enjoy exploring some new caves as well as some old favorites in Lava Beds. We finished the long weekend off with a hike up Loomis Peak (thanks for the info, mtnsteve!) and some geocaching in the national forest west of Lassen National Park.
After an entire season of bad weather snowcamping, we finally got out on the snow this weekend when the sun was shining. Mtnsteve organized a Full Moon trip in Lassen…