I can’t believe I only have a month — give or take — left on my work detail here in northern California. It’s going by so fast!
I’ve spent less time physically located here than I would have liked, thanks to a combination of housing issues, power outages, weddings and contracting COVID, but now that I’m back in my cabin in Grass Valley, I’m firmly dedicated to spending as MANY of my waking hours as possible exploring as much of northern California as my Jeep can get to.
I’ve been spending a lot of my weekends here on the actual Tahoe National Forest — embarrassingly enough, I actually haven’t even seen Lake Tahoe yet! It’s managed separately from the Tahoe, fun fact, — but I finally got around to venturing outside of my (temporary) forest’s borders this past weekend and drove about three hours northwest up to Lassen Volcanic National Park with my friend Ana.
Like most high-elevation National Parks, Lassen Volcanic is a little trickier to navigate by vehicle during the winter months. (The Dixie Fire-related closures didn’t help, either.) The main road through the park wasn’t plowed, so we had to exit the park and drive almost two hours around it, through a lower elevation and back up, to get between the two hikes I wanted to do.
We started by doing Sulphur Works. Normally, Sulphur Works is located RIGHT along the edge of a road. And there’s a parking lot. But, being that it’s winter, we had to park at the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center and hike up the unplowed road. It wasn’t a bad hike at all! It’s about two miles out-and-back, and while snowshoes and/or cross-country skis are usually recommended, the roughly six feet of snow was packed down enough that Ana and I were totally find in just our hiking boots.
Sulphur Works is REALLY cool. After you hike about a mile from the visitor center, you’re there. There’s a boiling mud pot on your left and steam vents to your right.
You can smell ’em before you see ’em.
Ana and I ended up continuing our hike up past Sulphur Works a little bit to see more of the park from a slightly higher elevation.
It was a really warm day, so no, we weren’t cold.
The Dixie Fire affected a huge part of the park, and we could see the burn scar from our hike up and along 89, and while we were driving in and out of the Lassen Southwest Entrance Station.
The burn scar actually looked pretty cool in the snow. I couldn’t grab an unobstructed photo, but if you zoom in and look closely, you can see that the charred trees and their shadows form a really visual grid along the mountainside.
After Sulphur Works, we drove to our second hike: Manzanita Lake.
It took us a little less than two hours to drive out of park, around it and back in at the Northwest Entrance Station.
This hike was pretty easy. It was just a two-mile loop around Manzanita Lake. The lake was GORGEOUS. I wasn’t expecting the trail to run RIGHT alongside the lake for a portion of the hike.
…Nor was I expecting it to run adjacent to the main road right by the entrance station. Luckily there weren’t a ton of cars using the road during our hike, but I can see how it would be a little annoying during busier summer months.
And I will say — we probably should have used snowshoes for this hike.
But, the weather was still gorgeous.
We (Ana) even spotted a bald eagle during our trek.
Ana’s a wildlife biologist, so she has an eye for critters.
After we spotted this guy, we spent a little bit sitting and watching him. Ana whipped out her binoculars and joked about how every single wildlife biologist perpetually works to perfect the art of taking cellphone photos through binocular lenses.
After we finished our Manzanita Lake loop, we got back in the Jeep to head home. We stopped at the Shingletown Saloon for pizza, and then made our three-hour drive back to Grass Valley.
Overall, it was a great trip! Lassen Volcanic is really cool and I would definitely recommend it if you find yourself with a few extra days in northern California!
