Lava Landscapes

My friend Ann and I are standing in Devil’s Kitchen, in the middle of Lassen Volcanic National Park, and something’s definitely cooking. Water and mud are bubbling up from the crusty yellow ground all around us; vents are belching steam 20 feet in the air, thick with foul-smelling hydrosulfuric acid. A sign stuck in the midst of it all reads: “It’s not a question of ‘if’ the volcano will erupt, but ‘when.’ ”

When? And all that effort with the SPF 30 too.

Volcanoes were the subject of two big-screen films this year, but this place is proof that even Hollywood can’t outdo Mother Nature.

Lassen is a virtual volcanic theme park. Signs of serious underground indigestion are everywhere: craggy ridges, colorful dunes, lava beds heaped high at the edge of a campground, underground lava tunnels wide enough for a Metro Rail car--not to mention the smelly steam that engulfs your face at the discretion of the wind.

On this weekend early in the camping season, a park ranger said that the odds of an eruption during our visit were about 1 in 100. Reassured that we would live to eat the 10-day supply of food that we had packed for our four-day camping trip, my adventurous friend and I set out to discover real volcano country.

The most frustrating part of said discovery was the drive out of Los Angeles--which we unwisely chose to do during the 5 p.m. rush hour. We were hoping to stretch our three-day excursion into an almost-four-day vacation. As the night wore on, however, we decided it would be a bad idea to get to the park in the wee hours and fumble around in the dark with mostly borrowed camping equipment. We stopped for the night north of Sacramento.

We departed at 6 a.m., and by 10 that morning had picked our picturesque spot in Loop C at Manzanita Lake campground, where roughing it is not all that rough. Manzanita has the most amenities of the seven Lassen Park campgrounds (at $12 a night, it’s also the most expensive), including hot showers, firewood, a pay telephone and a camp store (which even sells cafe latte).

We pitched our dome tent with surprising ease, shoved our food into the bear-proof bin (provided at each campsite), and by 11 a.m. were on our way.

On a walk to the Kings Creek waterfall, I spent most of the trek stopping, looking up at the blue sky, inhaling deeply and marveling at the majesty of nature, the mountains and rushing water (melting off Lassen). After a sometimes rocky but manageable hike to the falls and back, we had a tailgate lunch from the cooler and headed for the most intriguing dot on the map, labeled “Devil’s Kitchen.” The Kitchen is part of the geothermal system in Lassen Park, where you can see, hear and smell evidence of real underground volcanic activity.

Getting there, the drive was long, swinging out and around the park on paved California 89/36 toward a town called Chester. It was almost 6 p.m. by the time we got to the trail; the friendly people at the Drakesbad Guest Ranch there pointed the way, while allowing us to park in their short-term parking lot. You can ride horseback to Devil’s Kitchen from the ranch stables ($37, reservations recommended), but the last ride was already booked by the time we arrived. We made our way on foot through a meadow filled with grazing deer, followed by a jaunt through the woods. Midway we were hit with the smell of sulfur and the eerie glug, glug, glug of bubbling mud and water.

When we reached Devil’s Kitchen, steam was spouting up across what appeared to be several acres of hilly ground. There was a maze of wood plank walkways and stairs, allowing visitors to venture into the heat of things.

There are signs everywhere warning visitors to stay on the walkways, stating that the ground is unstable and the temperatures scalding. Kendall Bumpass, a miner in the mid-1800s, learned about the deceptively thin surfaces the hard way. He broke through the ground in a thermal area and lost a leg. In his honor, the largest of the numerous thermal areas in Lassen Park is named Bumpass Hell.

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We returned to camp about 10 p.m., too tired to eat. Aside from the ongoing thermal activity, Lassen appears to be a peaceful, visually awesome national treasure, framed by green trees, snowcapped mountains and serene lakes. (The visitor season runs roughly from late May until early October.) The scent of pine and crackling campfires permeate the park, and deer seem almost as plentiful as the stars in the sky.

The ultimate excursion in Lassen Park, of course, is to hike the 2 1/2-mile switchback trail to the top of Mt. Lassen, which blew its top 83 years ago, setting fires and rearranging the face of the peak in the process. It’s topped with snow almost year-round; the trail doesn’t even open until midsummer. While the Lassen Peak trail is the most treacherous in the park, Cinder Cone feels like a close second.

To get to it, we took California 89/44 out and around the northeast boundary of Lassen Park, a 30-mile drive from Manzanita to Butte Lake campground. Evidence of serious volcano activity is most evident here. Lava rocks are piled a few stories high at the edge of the campground, forming an unscalable barrier to Butte Lake.

Cinder Cone is an amazingly symmetrical mound of ash, cinder and volcanic bombs (fragments of ejected lava). The steep trail is not all that inviting--it’s like walking through deep beach sand at a 35-degree angle--but the view is killer.

From the top of Cinder Cone we could see Butte Lake, partially clogged by the Fantastic Lava Beds, off to one side; and Lassen Peak, Crescent Crater and other jagged peaks in the other direction. The Painted Dunes, reddish orange, black and yellow heaps colored by a combination of cinder, ash and iron, are directly below.

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Budget for Two

Gas: $110.00

Food: 65.00

Camping fee (2 nights): 24.00

Valley Oaks Inn, Woodland: 49.26

Park entrance fee: 5.00

Firewood: 6.00

Fast food on road: 20.81

FINAL TAB: $280.07

Lassen Volcanic National Park, information (916) 595-4444.