NPS Website; Local Website
WHAT IS IT?Mount Lassen erupted in 1921, making it the site of the second most recent volcanic eruption in the continental United States.
BEAUTY (8/10)
Lassen Volcanic NP is a pristine Sierra Nevada alpine wilderness. Glacial lakes, snowy mountain peaks and glimmering blue skies. Admittedly, we did not realize the absolute beauty of the Park until we had left. Pictures do not lie, do they?
HISTORICAL INTEREST (4/10)
Mount Lassen was America’s volcanic touchstone until the eruption of Mt. St. Helens 1980. Since then, the California peak’s fame has waned. The volcano awoke from a 200,000-year dormancy in May of 1914 and continued to spit fire for a full year.
CROWDS (5/10)
The remaining July snow pack limited our hiking options and we were reduced to the venerable National Parks experience: the auto tour. Lassen Volcanic NP’s narrow, tortuous road makes for slow, careful driving and can lead to anger between the tailgating of behemoth trucks and the slow pace of nervous drivers.
EASE OF USE/ACCESS (1/5)
The Park’s northern entrance is 50 miles east of Interstate 5 at Redding, Calif. along CA Route 44. The Park’s southern entrance is 50 miles east of Red Bluff, Calif. along CA Route 36 and then north for 8 miles on CA Route 89.
Route 89 twists, turns and climbs its way through the Park for a long 20 miles, connecting the northern and southern entrance. The road is closed for much of the year because of snow. Check ahead to see if the road is passable. This year it opened on June 1. The fall snow could come as early as late September, early October.
CONCESSIONS/BOOKSTORE (2/5)Signs at nearly every overlook as well as the front page of the Lassen Volcanic NP newspaper proclaim that a new Visitor Center is on its way and will be located at the Park’s southern entrance. “On its way” means spring of 2007 at the earliest. Meanwhile, visitor services and concessions inside the Park seem to have taken a backseat. We were not impressed by the small book selection at the northern Visitor Center.
Auto tour brochures are available upon entry for a steep $6. The booklet looked nice and was full color but six bucks was too costly for us. A topographic hiking map is on sale for the same $6 price. Do not bother getting the map in June or early July because most of the higher elevation trails are snow covered.
COSTS (3/5)
Entry is $10 per vehicle, free with the National Parks Pass.
RANGER/GUIDE TO TOURIST RATIO (4/5)
The northern Visitor Center was packed with Rangers. One giving a 2 pm talk on animal tracks; at least three behind the desk. Thing is, we were on our way out of the Park by the time we found where the Rangers live.
If you enter Lassen from the north, you will find the Park well-staffed. If you are driving in from the South, you will probably wonder ‘where the heck is everyone?’
TOURS/CLASSES (5/10)
We were too miserly to purchase the $6 auto tour guide, relying instead on the roadside pullouts to tell us what we were looking at. So we drove and drove until we reached the northern Visitor Center and Museum.
One worthwhile stop was the self-guided trail in the “Devastated Area”. This short, mostly paved walk gave us a crash course on the area’s turbulent history. The Devastated area, once green with trees and grassy fields, was swept clean (denuded says the Park pamphlet) by lava flow and onslaught of rocks spewed from the volcano. Interpretive panels explain how B.F. Loomis not only alerted the rest of the area’s inhabitants of the erupting volcano but also found time to photograph and document the event. The Site’s museum is named after him.
At the Loomis Museum, Daily Ranger talks are offered summer afternoons. There is a film shown on request, a few displays and a slight bookstore. We could have spent more time at the Museum and VC but, like we said, we were pretty much finished with our Park experience by the time we arrived.
FUN (5/10)
Lassen Volcanic National Park provided a scenic drive between Aunt Martha’s house in Paradise, Calif. and our last chance to have an In-N-Out Burger in Redding, Calif. It was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but we were hard-pressed to find a reason to spend more time since most of the signature trails were still snow-filled and inaccessible.
WOULD WE RECOMMEND? (4/10)Lassen Volcanic NP contains all four types of volcanoes found in the world today. It also provides insight as to how an area recovers after a volcanic eruption. If volcanoes are your thing, you will find Lassen fascinating.
TOTAL 41/80
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