6/4/2022 Lassen National Park. What a Surprise

We were driving towards Lassen Nation Park when Sandy discovered using her IPhone that today was our lucky day.  The Park Rangers had opened up an additional 25+ miles of roads in the park.  This allowed us to drive all the way through the park from the North side on RT 44 to the South side to RT 36.  When we left the campground we had expected only to be able to see four miles of the park as up until today only four miles of road was open.

As we drove into the park it became evident that it takes some major work to open the roads after a Winter in this park.  The soil is volcanic ash.  The trees are pines with a root structure that lies close to the surface.  The winds are brutal and the snow is high and heavy.  As the snow slides down the mountain it knocks the large trees onto the road as well as covers the roads.

Lassen is a volcano that erupted in May 1915.  It blew volcanic ash and gas 30,000’ and could be seen 150 miles away.  The mountains stand above 8000’ in elevation.

Since it is an active volcano, it has boiling mud pots, sulfur pits, hot springs and frozen lakes directly along side of large amounts of snow.  A very interesting dynamic.

We were lucky to be one of the first cars to travel completely through the park in 2022.

Today they still have seismographs monitoring its activity

From the pictures below you can see how high the snow was along side the road.  In one picture I am standing next to an outhouse that was just unburied and Sandy is standing next to the snow that is along side of the parking lot.