From Crater Lake I endured an awful mid-day drive down I-97, stopping for an early dinner at the lovely confluence of Spring Creek and Williamson River in Collier Memorial State Park, busy with families on a summer Saturday. Stopped for food and supplies in Klamath Falls and resumed a long drive into rural north-central California, heading for Lava Beds National Monument. The flat two-lane highway had a speed limit of 60MPH, but I didn't feel like driving 60MPH. I drove 40MPH. There was no one on the road so I wasn't holding anyone up, and the couple of cars that came up behind me breezed by easily in the other lane, as no one was coming that way either. It was a relaxing driving and I got 45 MPG!
Lava Beds is way off the beaten track. I pulled in the campground at 6:00PM on a lovely Saturday in July and had no trouble getting a site. The campground was nice and quiet too, until just around dusk when the fellow across the way took out his guitar and began a singer-songwriter routine, the first of many I would end up enduring this summer in California.
Lava Beds NM is a small part (about 10%) of the Medicine Lake Volcano, a shield volcano covering an area of almost 800 square miles, with a volume of at least 140 cubic miles. It "may well be the largest Pleistocene-Holocene edifice of the Far West.". The Newberry Volcano in Oregon has more volume and the Long Valley caldera in southern California is a rival in length and width. Medicine Lake is a long, low, and undramatic profile, never rising higher than 7,913' elevation, less than 4000' above its base. 27,970 acres are official wilderness, designated by Richard Nixon.
The dirty truth is I don't really care for lava. But I’m grateful that it provides a pretext to protect a sagebrush environment where I can wander around freely. I spent the morning doing strolls-not-hikes around the monument. I visited Fleemer Chimney, Black Crater, Captain Jack's Sanctuary and the West Wildlife Overlook of the Tule Lake NWR. Lava Beds is part of the Cascade Range, but the ecosystem is much more Ed Abbey than Harvey Manning. I know sagebrush is a common shrub and often invasive, but I love its intoxicating scent. I recognize very few of the bushes and trees. The dominant tree is the Western Juniper, with its peely bark and blueberry-looking cones. I would become very familiar with this tree over the next year. While it can grow to 60', it rarely tops 30' in the rocky soils of the Lave Beds National Monument. I also saw a vulture and a lizard.
Finally I saw in print what I was realizing from my wanderings: There is no surface water at Lava Beds. To include an area with no surface water in the Cascades does seem to put an undue reliance on geology. It's not all that arid, and I presume it gets plenty of snow, but the volcanic soil just sucks it all up. The campground takes its water from a nice well.
By noon it was too hot for me and I realized I would have to do my hiking early in the morning or closer to evening. So I laid low all afternoon and read a damn good park brochure on the Modoc War, California’s only major Indian War, fought in and around the Lava Beds. From November 29, 1872 until June 1, 1873, some 60 Modoc fighters killed 53 US soldiers while losing only 5 themselves, though 10 others were later executed. 17 civilians were also killed, at least 14 of them by the Modoc.
The Modoc lived along the shores of Tule Lake and Lost River. As whites settled in the area, they demanded the Modoc be put onto a reservation. The young Modoc leader, known to whites as Captain Jack, sought a reservation on Lost River. Placed instead on the Klamath Indian Reservation, he led a group out. Pressured back in in 1869. But in April 1870, Captain Jack and 371 Modoc moved back to Lost River.
Two years later, US troops moved against them, burning their village and sending them off scattered. The Modoc regrouped in the Lava Beds but killed 14 male settlers along the way, essentially sealing their fate. In the meantime the lava beds were a great stronghold. Deep lava trenches and small habitable caves provided good cover and defense. Captain Jack's Sanctuary looks like a sea of sagebrush but is in fact riddled with lava flow in various states of assembly. Over 300 white soldiers moved in against the stronghold, but unwitting of the terrain’s features were beaten badly by the Modoc.
President Grant appointed a Peace Commission to meet with the Modoc, who plotted an ambush. When the Peace Commission also rejected the Modoc request for a reservation on Lost River, Captain Jack killed General Canby, the only time a US general was killed by an Indian, though obviously not in battle. Another Modoc killed a second Peace Commissioner.
Back to the stronghold. On April 26, 1873, Modoc forces ambushed 69 US troops and killed or wounded 2/3 of the patrol in 45 minutes. On May 10 the Modoc attempted another ambush at Dry Lake but this time they were routed. The defeat broke the Modoc back into factions, and all had surrendered by June. In October, Captain Jack and three other Modoc, including Schonchin John, were executed.
Early in the evening I hiked the Schonchin Butte Trail (1.7RT/500') to a fire lookout on the highest point in the National Monument. Less than two miles round trip and only a 500' elevation gain, it was more a stroll than a hike. On the way up I encountered a rattlesnake, only the second one I’ve ever come upon. The first time I encountered one, it and I quickly scampered in opposite directions. This one was making its way across the trail as I approached. I stopped to let it go its way but it began coiling up on the edge of the trail. Feisty bugger. It remained coiled and hissing so I tried moving it along by lobbing a little rock mortar fire its way, careful not to hit it of course. That didn’t work, and I later read that throwing things near a rattlesnake is no way to move it along. Eventually I got off trail and circled well around it, just like you‘re supposed to.
The Lookout up top had 360 degree views of course, plus good signage describing what lay out in the various directions. The area was very smoky, which diminished visibility but added drama at sunset. Nice flowers growing out of muddy red lava rock. Nice splatter/cinder cone.
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| Smoke-enhanced sunset from Schonkin Butte |
Lying in my sleeping bag early the next morning I noticed some rain clouds gathering. Apparently I was too sleepy to register that I could see these rain clouds only because I hadn’t put up my rain fly. I went back to sleep, only to be awakened by - rain! With the fly on it would have been nice and peaceful, but instead I had to scramble stuff to the car or under the junipers, and by the time I finished it had of course stopped raining. Oh well. I was up now, so I had some breakfast and headed out along the Whitney Butte Trail (7RT/-300'). Mostly cool-ish with cloud cover and enough sun to leave the sky a dusty blue. The trail was flat, along what had to have once been a fire line - all sage on one side, all flowers and grass on the other. It ended at the Callahan Lava Flow, which from the distance was a nice dark chocolate slurry in the sun but up close was a pile of sharp black rocks.
Whitney Butte isn't as high as Schonchin Butte but it has no trail, and scrambling up the steep, slippery, sharp pumice was rough going. Ouch! a rock poked a tiny pinprick in my right index finger, my oozing blood adding to the mix of future soil. Three wounds now, all in my right hand, this the first to be inflicted by nature. Bookselling may be a rugged profession, but clearly it did not toughen up the hands enough for life in the wild. Up top, I sat in the shade of a pine, the first one I'd seen all day. The couple hundred feet of elevation is enough to make for moister soil and richer vegetation. The wind opens up a hole in the smoke to give me my first and last glimpse of Mount Shasta..
The day heated up and by mid-afternoon the trails were appropriately deserted, but when I got back to the Visitors Center a few dozen people were donning helmets to join the 3:00PM Ranger Cave Tour. As of 2001, park rangers had documented 436 caves at Lava Beds - by far the largest number of such caves in the continental US - with a cumulative length of 144,237'. It would probably be pretty cool and in fact the cool temperatures of the caves are undoubtedly a part of the draw. But I wanted to be outside and learn about the flora. I found some token info in a binder in the VC, some half-hearted signs on a trail to the Mushpot Cave, the only one I entered, but the stories here are mostly the geology and the Modoc Indians. I guess sagebrush just isn't news.
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