Caves and Craters

The sun rose and so did we, but not at the same time: we gave it a bit of a head start. It was still the work week, so we stopped in Westwood, CA at a coffee shop where I could work and Faith could bead. We both got a coffee and split an excellent though expensive cinnamon roll. I was done with work a couple hours later, so we hit the road again and drove up to the northeast side of Lassen Volcanic National Park to do a hike. The hike takes you along a huge lava flow and to the top of an extinct cinder cone. The first part of the hike was an easy, flat walk through the forest. The hike up the cone was brutal. It was angled at about 45 degrees and every step on the loose volcanic rubble moved you a half-step backwards. It took a few stops to catch our breath, but we made it to the top and were rewarded with an excellent view of Lassen Peak and other mountains/volcanoes in the park along with a steady wind that nearly blew us off the top. We made our way around the edge of the cone and got a view down to the bottom of the crater inside. I don’t know what I expected, but I certainly expected something more interesting than mundane rubble at the bottom that looked identical to what we had just climbed up. We walked/slid our way back down, dipped our toes in a lake adjacent to the lava flow, then got back to driving. Our next stop was Lava Beds National Monument, another lava-filled area that also boasted lava tube caves.

We got to the monument shortly before sunset and explored the first cave we came across, Valentine Cave, which was really interesting. In great contrast to the other caves we had been in, these caves only required a caving permit to enter; there were no closely-guided, ticketed tours to enter them. We made it to the end of the cave, turned around and made our way out. The visitor’s center was closed for the day, so we drove just outside the park and found a place to sleep, stopping to see the large Mammoth Crater at the edge of the park. We made dinner from rice, beans, and corn then went to sleep.

When we got up in the morning, we made our first stop the visitor’s center where we could get a caving permit, post card, and information on which caves we should go to. The ranger informed us that there were over 800 known caves in the park but that only about 20 were “developed”. We didn’t have time to do all 800, so we chose about a half-dozen to explore. There is a loop adjacent to the visitor center that goes through a bunch of the developed caves, so we started on that loop and did the following caves:

• Golden Dome: had all sorts of yellow moss that shone like gold when looked at with a headlamp.
• Hopkins Chocolate: had numerous lava formations that look exactly like melted dark chocolate, and we saw a bat in there!
• Sunshine: had some nice holes for the sun to get in along with some cool but scary looking spiders.
• Sentinel: is several lava tube caves on top of each other, which was really neat to look at.

After the loop, we were going to hit a couple ice caves, but apparently they do not have ice in them, so we skipped them out of protest and went to the Painted Cave to see a number of Native American pictographs (rock paintings). The signs indicated that the origin of the pictographs is unknown but that they likely had ceremonial and cultural significance. To be honest, they looked like doodles of bored teenagers, much like you would see coming from today’s spray paint-armed delinquents. We had had our fill of lava tube caves, so we kept driving and stopped at a few other points of interest in the park before continuing on north to Klamath Falls, the largest town for many miles.

I kept seeing Klamath Falls as a larger city on the map, so, for whatever reason, I assumed that there would be stuff going on and things to see. However, once we got into and drove through town, we rapidly realized that there isn’t much going on there and the place is actually rather stale. Since it is Faith’s birthday month, we stopped at Dutch Bros and got her free B-day drink. We split it, hit a Walmart for some groceries, and decided to continue driving instead of spending the evening in town. Our next destination: Crater Lake National Park. Some of you may be thinking: it’s the middle of June, Crater Lake is surely open and mostly snow-free. Others of you may be thinking: it’s the middle of June, I bet there’s a ton of snow at Crater Lake. Well, it didn’t occur to us that the snow at Lassen NP was perhaps indicative of the state of another mountainous park many miles north. So, when we arrived at Crater Lake, we were rapidly informed that only a very small portion of the rim drive was open and almost all of the visitor centers were still closed due to feet of snow on the roads. This was a bit of a bummer, but at least we got to hang at the lodge and stay warm while looking down at the spectacular lake. We didn’t really want to drive back down from the rim, so we stealthily camped in the parking lot. However, tonight wasn’t just any normal night: the National Weather Service had issued a freeze warning, anticipating temperatures as low as 28. For those of you who live in an insulated house, this sounds like nothing, but we live in a mostly not-insulated van. So, in order to survive the night, we got out all of our blankets, our backpacking sleeping bags, and put on our thermal layers under our sweats and jackets. That night, we were not cold, not even a little. The air in the van was cold, but we were cozy and warm all night long, which made getting up the next morning a little difficult. It was the weekend, and we didn’t have any pressing plans, so we took the time to sleep in and enjoy the warmth.

Animals Seen

• Quail
• Townsend’s Big-eared bat

Stats

• ~200 miles of driving
• ~5 miles of hiking
• 6 caves explored
• 1 freezing night survived