PROLOGUE

In July 2008, I set off from Seattle on a 15-month camping trip around the mountains and deserts of the western United States. This is the far-from-complete story of that trip, based largely on notes I took at the time, supplemented by subsequent research and editing, though not nearly enough of either.

July 2008
I was sitting against a concrete wall outside Starbucks in a strip-mall along Highway 99 in north Seattle, a place that could have been absolutely anywhere and the sort I typically avoid. I was there because Car Toys was installing a stereo in my new Yaris, and they said it would take three hours. What I was supposed to do on Highway 99 for three hours was beyond me. I had a tolerable dinner at Ivar's and a cup of coffee at Starbucks and was reading Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen to the noise of the traffic. The day was muggy but cooling in the still relatively warm (for Seattle) breeze, and the fact was I felt pretty nice. The physical workout from my yard sale that afternoon was one reason. Another was the pleasant temperature. But I had to admit that sitting outside a strip mall along Highway 99 was part of it too, giving me a sense of detachment that comes from being somewhere that could be absolutely anywhere, even though it was just a few miles from home.

The fact was my entire existence now had a quality of detachment that I really didn’t mind, even seemed to benefit from. "Feeling kind of exempt"*: that's the line I was looking for. I’d quit my job, was moving out of my apartment, and hitting the road for what I was hoping would be a 15-month tour of the mountains and deserts of the western United States.

I quit my job because I could. Single, no kids, no debt, no real responsibilities, I had grown bored with my job, not bored in the sense that I didn’t find it interesting, bored in the sense that my soul began screaming in pain as I sat for hours at a time in a dim cubicle staring at an outmoded monitor, ostensibly reviewing numbers on an archaic computer program. As I say, I quit because I could.

I had done a lot of hiking in the Pacific Northwest over the previous 14 years and was chafing to expand my range. A two-week vacation could get me into British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies, and down to Oregon and the south Cascades, but I was lusting over photos of the Colorado Plateau, Sedona, Antelope Canyon. I had never been to Yellowstone, Yosemite, or Grand Canyon. Basically I had never been anywhere and I decided that this was the time to go. How much longer would I be able to hike as strenuously as I wanted to?

Once I decided that I would do it, I came up with a grand itinerary in about fifteen minutes. It was rudimentary but had the beauty of simplicity. I would head south from Seattle into California in early summer, see the southernmost Cascades of Lassen and Shasta, then spend the bulk of the summer in the Sierras. When the weather pushed me out of the mountains I would head into the desert and winter in southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico. In spring I would explore the Colorado Plateau and spend the second summer in the Rockies until weather once again drove me out, at which time I would return to the Pacific Northwest and…

…well, I wasn’t sure what I would do then. Ideally, fifteen months out in the country would inspire me to a new life move, though the fatalist in me told acquaintances that they would find me on a street corner near them and please could they give generously. The truth was I was focusing on my trip and paying no attention at all to what would come next for what would by then be a grizzled 55-year old unemployed bookseller even more removed from modern life than he was when he left.

Reality was shaking me some. I was confronting the new technology. I needed to study my new car manual. I was switching to a digital camera for my trip and had to figure out how that worked. My new (also first) cell phone had not yet arrived and may or may not have been shipped. I was used to the imperial unresponsiveness of the old phone service. The new phone service was bright and cheery and shockingly amateurish. Root canal is old fashioned though, and my dental insurance was already exhausted for the year. Glad I saved $1000 on my car, as all that and more went into my mouth.

Not to mention the fires this time. The worst lightning storm in California's recorded history struck two weeks before I was scheduled to take off. In less than a day, an electrical storm unleashed nearly 8,000 lightning strikes that set more than 800 wildfires across northern California. Yosemite National Park had an air quality alert. Lassen National Park remained open despite thick smoke and falling ash. Road closures and evacuation orders prevailed in Shasta, Butte, and Trinity Counties.

“This doesn’t bode well for the fire season’, said Ken Clark, a meteorologist in Southern California and AccuWeather.com. ’We’re not even into the meat of the fire season at this point, and the brush is extremely dry. It’s not going to get any better, it’s going to get worse.”

I postponed my departure for a week, not because of the fires but because I couldn’t empty my apartment in time. For a single guy in a one bedroom apartment, I had an awful lot of stuff. Part of the problem was my apartment came with a generous storage compartment, which saved me from having to get rid of everything when I moved there from a three bedroom house 15 years earlier following my divorce. So here I was unearthing wedding gifts I hadn't sold in THAT garage sale.

And then there were books. I had been been a buyer in a bookstore for the past nine years and had accumulated a million books. I actually got rid of a million books and somehow still had a million books. It seemed I could get rid of another million and continue to have a million.

The heart of my packing was to divide things into three categories: 1) dispose 2) store somewhere and  3) bring along for the ride. Deciding to store or dispose required figuring where and how, while deciding to bring along meant only that, though whether it would all fit in my car would have to wait until I actually tried to pack. And the answer to that proved to be yeah but not very smoothly or intelligently. As my packing became more baroque - I marked one box "floor behind driver's seat" - I had visions of the people traveling the Oregon Trail and jettisoning the possessions they once thought of as "valuables” as they realized survival was their only remaining value. I suppose some people got to Sacramento or Willamette with their wardrobe in one piece. We just don't hear about them.
　
The delay did serve to let the fire situation unfold. I considered realigning my itinerary: going to the Rockies first and saving California for the following summer, as it looked possible that this just happened to be the summer not to hike in California. I resisted this plan in part because it would result in a lot more driving, but more because it would spoil the elegance of my magical U. I decided I would drive down to northern California and take a closer look. If it was bad enough I could circumvent the fires via Nevada and try California again further to the south. I took a crash course on the hiking in Nevada just in case.

July 7 was my birthday and I was feeling very sad and exhausted. The latter contributed to the former for sure. The preparations had been hellish and I frequently felt defeated, but I persevered and prevailed. I attributed this to the underlying excitement and buried prospects kicking up hope from below, even as the weight pushed them too far down for me to actually feel.

I finally left Seattle on July 9th at about 4:30 in the afternoon, driving down I-5 into the teeth of rush hour. Once I got past Tacoma the freeway was smooth sailing and I got to the turnoff for the Columbia Gorge and promptly made my first tactical error, taking the highway along the Washington side rather than the freeway along the Oregon side. My choice was in line with my goals for the trip - rural highway rather than intense interstate, but in this instance it meant a lot of ups and downs and no public campgrounds for quite a while. I finally got to Beacon Rock Stat Park around 9:30PM, grabbed the first campsite I saw, set up quickly, and had a very pleasant night. I spent several hours the next morning reorganizing my very, very (seriously, absurdly) over-loaded Yaris. I didn't shed significant weight, and my clearance remained that of a low-rider, but at least I put things where I might find them and got myself better visibility than I had on I-5.

So on July 10, 11:30AM, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River in the shadow (but not wind screen) of the Bridge of the Gods, it was a new day. And as the great Van Morrison once sang, "Let the healing begin."

* Un-American Blues Activity Dream Richard Fariña 

A Note on Dates
Blogger does not provide a simple method of listing posts chronologically, so I had to manipulate posting dates in order to list them the way I wanted. All dates of 2020 reflect this manipulation and should be ignored. The 2008-2009 dates are close estimates of the actual events. Historians, biographers, private investigators, law enforcement officers, et al will need to conduct more extensive investigation if they wish to determine the precise dates.

Part I - The Southern Cascades

1) First Blood (no photos)

2) Crater Lake National Park

3) Lava Beds National Monument

4) Burney Falls

5) Mount Lassen Volcanic National Park

First Blood

7/10/09
It didn’t take long for the wild to bare its claws. I stopped for dinner at a rest stop along I-97 and had barely begun to arrange my stuff on the picnic table before I caught a nasty splinter deep in my finger. I proceeded with my dinner, barely avoiding taking in a couple more splinters - this table was a menace - and then broke out my new first aid kit for some tweezers. I worked for a while trying to tease the splinter out but without success. So I returned to the first aid kit for the accompanying booklet to see if it had any wisdom on splinter removal, and there it was: do not try and tease the splinter out. Instead, use the tweezers to remove the tissue from above the splinter area. Tissue? They meant I should tear my skin off. Egad. But I buckled down to do it and my skin came off surprisingly easily - like tissue? - and then I just plucked the stick of wood out from the little bowl of bloody mucous, applied a dose of triple-disinfectant salve, wrapped a band-aid around it and heh! - I had risen to meet my first challenge - executing a proper and successful splinter removal operation.

Crater Lake National Park

7/11/08
Crater Lake National Park would be my only stop in Oregon and the only place on my entire itinerary I had been to before, once, in the summer of 2006. That time the park had been engulfed in smoke from a forest fire. This time the weather was gorgeous so for the first time I could actually see the famously blue lake.

Crater Lake sits in a big hole (a caldera, not a crater) left by the eruption some 7700 years ago of a Cascade stratovolcano posthumously named Mount Mazama. It is the deepest lake in the US (1,943 feet), seventh deepest in the world, and also one of the clearest. Thus I was surprised to see large swaths of some kind of scum floating on the surface. I later asked the ranger if this was algae and she said "no, but that's what everybody thinks" (funny how we are so quick to assume things are always going to hell). In fact it was pollen from the pines, perfectly normal, perfectly ecological. The currents were gathering it into patterns and so I was able to get into it like it was artwork by Christo and Jean Claude.

Crater Lake became our 5^th (or 6^th - it's a long story) National Park in 1903. It is a relatively small park - 183,224 acres - and the lake itself takes up 13,440 acres. The caldera walls are off limits to everyone, including the few who might safely negotiate their steep crumbly walls. Only one trail leads from the rim down to the lake, and no private boats are allowed. A concessionaire’s tour boat whisks people around for a couple of hours, and you can get off the boat and traipse around Wizard Island. Tickets for the boat cost $26, fine if you're on vacation but not so great if you've just quit your job. For me that means not this time.


Otherwise the primary activity is driving around the 33-mile rim road. This is closed by snow most of the year and it was still closed the day I arrived, but the rangers said it could open the following day. So I puttered around the exhibits, tried to relearn some geology, and then found some shade and read the park newsletter. It reported on the forest fire I witnessed - called the Bybee Fire - on my visit two years earlier. Lightning started the fire on July 23, 2006 and 3000 acres burned before a snowstorm put it out in the middle of September. The national park managed the fire rather than extinguish it. Fire crews protected developed areas and worked to keep it within the national park, otherwise let it burn freely. The park considers its fire management a success, and refers to it as a socio-educational event, meaning they had to make some educational lemonade to pacify all the cranky visitors who couldn’t see the lake they had come to see. (Yosemite was doing the same thing late last month.)


Some other things I read:

  - Park HQ gets 44 feet of snow each year.

 -  The average high for July and August is 69 degrees. The average low for those months is 41 degrees. The surface of the lake gets up to 59 degrees in August and drops to 37 degrees by February.

 - Since 1983, summer nighttime air temperatures at Crater Lake have risen an average of 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. This is consistent with patterns across the western US. Not yet evident if lake itself is getting warmer.

 - Surveys indicate 17 pairs of northern spotted owl reside in the NP.

But I knew I shouldn't have been reading all of this. I should have been reading the owners manual for my new car. I was already getting a light requesting maintenance. But no, I found the manual too dispiriting, and mosquitoes drove me to a breezy overlook where I resumed my nature studies.

  - Mountain pine beetles have recently moved from lodgepole pine, their traditional host, to white bark pine, Crater Lake's keystone species. This is probably because warming temperatures have allowed them to survive at higher elevations previously beyond their range, elevations where only white bark pine prevail. White pine blister rust, a non-native fungus, is also attacking the white bark. The park is battling the fungus but has traditionally given the pine beetles their due as natives. The last outbreak at Crater Lake National Park was between 1923-30. But the park is taking further steps to protect the White bark, at least around Rim Village, employing a non-toxic chemical mimic hormone repellent.

The road around the crater rim did indeed open the next day - just for me - so I drove over to east side of the park and had my lunch at the White Pine Picnic Area. This sits near the base of Mount Scott, which rises to 8929’, the highest point in Crater Lake National Park and one of the two surviving remnants from Mount Mazama. Though drier on this side of the park, some snow patches remained. Huge numbers of ants were going wild on the newly melted-out ground.

Sometime after lunch I had to go over and help a fellow traveler push his SUV out of a snowdrift. My original notes used the term "some moron" instead of “fellow traveler“ - after all, the parking lot was completely free of snow except for the one snow bank he decided to drive into, presumably to show off how his SUV could handle snowdrifts - but subsequent events led me to soften my judgment. I was reading and studiously ignoring him and his party as they first tried gunning the vehicle back and forth and then tried the cardboard-under-the-wheels routine. Finally they settled on trying to push it out and seeing I would be critical to that effort I went over and with a heave and a ho we pushed it back on to dry land.

Later that day when I went to change the bandage on my picnic table wound I saw dried blood from a bigger gash which I had obviously incurred but hadn’t felt while pushing the SUV. Back to the first aid kit for the triple-antibacterial and an even bigger bandage, also on my right hand. At this rate I would quickly become ambidextrous.

The next day I set out on my first hike of 2008 - on July 12th! Normally I let myself go to hell from November to March or so but start getting out more through the spring and by June I am hiking rather regularly. This year, due to preparations for my trip, I’ve done no hiking. No Tiger Mountain, no Lake 22, no nothing.

My destination was Mount Scott, which despite its elevation is a relatively short hike with a moderate grade (5RT/1250'), a good way to start. 8929’ is a mere bump compared to what I would be looking at in the Sierra Nevada but is quite high for the Cascades. One can enjoy a splendid hiking seasons in the North Cascades and never get close to 8000'. I debuted my sun hat and found I liked it. Along with my first-aid kit, it was a good start for my REI stuff. Lots of snow patches early on but up high was dry and smooth. Lookout on peak is defunct. Smoky pall over northern California, though Mt McGlaughlin was rather clear. Other than that I saw nearby Thielsen, with Bachelor and some Sisters off in the distance.

Mt. McLoughlin from Mount Scott

Lava Beds National Monument

7/13/08
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.

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.

Mount Lassen Volcano National Park

7/18/08
Lassen Peak is 10,457' and the road rises to 8512', making this the easiest summit (5RT/2000’) of any of the Cascade stratovolcanoes. I had hoped to hike it - it would be only the second Cascade volcano for me, after Oregon’s South Sister - but the peak was not at its best. Lassen was only hazily visible through the smoke from the area’s forest fires, the view from the top would have been useless, and I would have been breathing smoky air, so I had to pass this time. (I would return and achieve this modest ambition in September 2016 - Lassen Peak Ascent)

Instead I went to Bumpass Hell, the park’s prime showcase for active volcanic processes. Steaming, sulphorous, discolored rock and slime, it looks, smells, and feels like a toxic waste site. If it were an industrial site we'd be trying to shut it down. But it's natural and a part of a national park and a very popular destination. I quickly found the sulphur, the blinding white clay, the steam, and the crowds too masochistic for a hot summer day, so I retreated and spent a pleasant afternoon at a picnic table in the shade above a lovely hazy Lake Helen. I returned to Bumpass Hell in the early evening and had the place to myself. Still smelly and steamy, but without the hot sun it was a lot more fun. I did get a steam blast, temporarily blinding me, while walking on a boardwalk over the hot cauldrons. Since I was there alone I would likely have disintegrated if I had fallen in. Joe Bumpass, the guy they named the place after, was there with a group, so when he fell in he only lost his leg.

Bumpass Hell

Cinder Butte
My grand strategy called for me to mix some backpacking in with my car camping. Save a few bucks, widen the experience, maybe develop some skills, as I am far from a seasoned backpacker. I figured Lassen, a less-visited national park, would be a good place to break the ice. It has no designated back country sites, no reservations, permits are free and easy to get. I hatched a plan to pack in about five miles, set up my camp, and then go on with a lightened load another four miles to the Cinder Cone area in the far northeast corner of the park. There I would eat in the picnic area and replenish my water before hiking the four miles back to my tent. This would make for a 13-mile hike, only five of those with full pack, and with very little elevation change. And that’s what I did.

The first leg went smoothly, five miles of upsy-downsy trail winding along Summit, Echo, Upper Twin, and Lower Twin Lakes. Nice temperature and few bugs; how many Cascade lakes could you sit around on a warm July day without getting driven to distraction? I pitched my tent near Rainbow Lake, dropped my sleeping bag, and proceeded on toward Cinder Cone and Butte Lake. I had run my plan by a ranger at the Visitors Center, and while she mentioned the Cinder Cone section of the park had areas closed to hiking, she did not mention that these last four miles would be grueling. First the trail passed through a recent burn, which is to say it was totally exposed to the midday sun, and then it entered into an ash fall hell - thick, soft, sand-like pumice, tough walking, nearly treeless, hot as a parking lot.

Cinder Cone eventually came into view, and it was impressive indeed.

Cinder Cone

The newest volcano in the Cascades, Cinder Cone was created about 350 years ago, probably in a matter of months. It is almost perfectly symmetrical, surrounded mostly by ash fall, lava bombs, and a smattering of young pines. The scene demanded exploration but by then I was too hot, tired and hungry to do anything more than gawk as I stumbled through a lovely but too-little-too- late stand of Ponderosa Pine and into the picnic area for a late afternoon dinner.

Here at least my plan proved sound. A picnic table in the shade, fresh drinking water, a cool breeze off the lake. As I ate I noticed that the people who were only out for the day were going home, and the campers were heading back to the campground, leaving the day-use area empty on this lovely summer evening. I yearned to stay but had to hike the four miles back to my tent before dark or I would never find it. So I did. And early the next morning I packed straight out to my car and drove the 45 minutes or so over highway and up a long gravel road to that entrance of the park, and proceeded to spend two lovely nights there, the best two nights of my trip thus far.

Butte Lake (6100') is an odd juxtaposition of bucolic lake and fresh looking volcanic rocks solidified from the lava flows that first created the lake. It has a fine little beach where people come to fish and picnic and swim and sit under beach umbrellas. Even I summoned the gumption to dive into the water and flail about. It felt great. A sign warned swimmers that a river otter had badly injured a young girl in the lake just a couple of weeks earlier, though the story suggests she had initiated the encounter, however innocently. Afterwards I sat in the shade of a Ponderosa Pine reading Atmospheric Disturbances, which I liked quite a bit even though it was taking me all summer to read. Heh, I'd been busy.

Sure enough, by late afternoon every one had drifted away and I had the place to myself. I was wearing shorts, a short sleeve shirt, and sandals with early evening temperatures in the 70s. I felt like I was in the tropics. A bald eagle swooped into the lake and snagged a fish. I gave some thought to hiking up Cinder Cone in the evening, but I was too happy enjoying this lovely lakeside leisure. Plus I had a little blister. Morning light would be nice too, right? On the other hand, Roadside Geology of Northern California was so unsatisfying that I got up to mosey around the lake. I spotted a crustacean of some kind trying to absorb a fish twice its length. I watched for a while and it made no evident progress, so I left it alone to wander further along the lake. When I returned they were in the exact same position and I wondered if it wasn't predation but rather an interspecies love that dare not speak its name.

Burney Falls

7/17/08
McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park. A mouthful.

The first thing I did was take a delectable shower so that I could stand next to people for a couple of days. I ate lunch at Lake Britton and then snoozed and read on a bluff above the shoreline. A warm to hot breeze felt pretty good in the shade. It's a popular place for motor boats. A search for two lost children went on around me, conjuring memories of sad childhood memories. Eventually the kids were found and I headed back to the falls, where the breeze was wet. Most of the people were in family groups, and while the wives and kids generally smiled, the fathers looked at me with a slight hostility. I was dressed a bit too much like a mountain hiker for what is mostly a short trail, but this was really the only look I had. I also suspect they questioned why a grown man who didn't’t have to be here was here at all.

The waterfalls were spectacular.

Burney Falls

Part II - Northern Sierra

Health Interlude/Technology Update

Golden Lakes/Mount Elwell

Lake Tahoe

Pyramid Lake

Carson Pass

Boo Boo Bear

Lake Aloha

Wright's Lake

Sonora Pass

Golden Lakes

7/22/08
After a mind-bending descent into the Central Valley for resupply -  the air quality in Redding was rated purple ("very unhealthy") by the EPA - I drove back up through Lassen VNP, then south for a long evening drive through the Feather River Canyon. This was very cool looking even as it was thick with smoke, an area worth exploring that I would have to miss due to the fires. I passed a number of Forest Service campgrounds along the way, completely empty except for the host, yet still charging $15. I’m thinking giving the inhospitable conditions they should be lowering the price and maybe drumming up some business, so on principle I kept driving into the night. Eventually I reached Plumas-Eureka State Park and was lucky to get a space at around 10:00PM. I headed out early the next morning to Chapman Creek CG which was charging $20 a night, presumably for the location. At least the air was a lot clearer. This is near Yuba Pass and the Lakes Basin Recreation Area of Tahoe National Forest. I'm in the Sierra Nevada!

I set off that afternoon for a stroll to Frazier Falls, where the flow was feeble. It is presumably a springtime show. My first take on the countryside was decidedly -eh. Of course it's midday, and I find most landscapes “eh” at midday. A nice breeze picked up though, and the ranger said the forecast was for high winds and possibly lightning, this just as they were getting a grip on the fires from last month.

The next day I hiked to the top of Mount Elwell (7818'). Along the way a couple of “young people” whisked by me on the trail. They carried small, light daypacks while I was in full northwest regalia, prepared for hypothermic conditions and looking like Noonak from the north by comparison. The young woman asked which way I came up, and I said I came up from the bottom, the only way I thought there was. She explained there were any number of ways around these hills and subtly enlightened me to the fact that this is roaming country, the way you go up and the way you come back can yield a better hike with a little creativity. She was far from preachy (though was indeed peachy). I met up with them again on top and they recommended a good route back, past lakes, waterfalls, and loads of flowers, all of which I’d have missed if I had simply gone down the way I came up. A perfectly delightful jaunt.

After my hike I went for a swim in Gold Lake. I rarely go in lakes in the North Cascades, but if I hiked around here I sure would. It isn’t a dramatic area but it is very nice, with endless hiking and loads of lakes. It seemed like the sort of place one could spend a very relaxed yet invigorating couple of days or weeks. I camped that night in dispersed camping along the Frazier Falls road and headed out early the next morning to the decidedly less relaxed Lake Tahoe.

Health Interlude/Technology Update

7/23/08

Health Interlude

Government health authorities seem to have had a pool going over what was going to do me in. One sign warned of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) an often-deadly respiratory disease found in the rural United States, where campers and hikers are the most likely to pick it up. Carried by rodents and passed to humans through rodent urine, saliva, or droppings. Symptoms usually appear within two weeks, though they could take three days to six weeks. The primary symptom is difficulty in breathing, caused by fluid buildup in the lung, quickly progressing to inability to breathe. High fever, pain, sometimes vomiting. There is no cure. It is in the mist or dust. We breathe it in and we die.

Another sign warned of Plague, which I didn’t know still existed but is apparently endemic in many parts of California, particularly the rural and undeveloped mountains. Plague is a highly infectious bacterial disease that primarily affects rodents. Hungry fleas will leave a sick or dead rodent to bite another animal, including humans. Avoid all contact with rodents and their fleas. Do not camp, sleep or rest near animals burrows.

The initial symptoms of plague include fever, chills, muscle aches, weakness, and swollen, tender lymph nodes, called 'buboes', which most commonly occur in the knee, armpit, or groin. This form is called bubonic plague. Contact a physician immediately if you become ill within 7 days of being in a plague area. If it is not diagnosed early, bubonic plague can progress to septicemic plague, which is more difficult to treat.You can help with the diagnosis by telling your doctor where you have been and what you have done that may have exposed you to plague.

Even my forest service map got into the game. "Ticks are known to transmit Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. If you develop rashes, flu-like symptoms, headaches or fever within a few days of your wilderness trip, or if you know you have been bitten by a tick, see your doctor immediately. If treated early, most tick related diseases can be easily cured." Do rural doctors have to suspect every flu is a potentially fatal illness?

Plague, Hantavirus, Lyme Disease, river otters and boiling volcanic water. Soon there would be rattlesnakes and scorpions, cougars and grizzlies, lightning bolts from the blue. But so far all I'd gotten was a nasty splinter from a killer picnic table, a gash from helping push an SUV out of a snowbank, and a bloody pinprick from volcanic rock on a cinder cone, the latter the only injury incurred from nature. No signs warned me of any of that.


Technology Update
My cell phone thus far was mostly an inert object, like a pet rock. I needed to find out if I was paying to turn it on to see if I had any messages. I called customer assistance a few times but the call failed each time.

I was beginning to hate my digital camera less than I hated it a couple of days earlier. Still, the viewfinder did not accurately reflect what the picture would be. I either had to compensate in my aim, making composition unnecessarily difficult, or adopt that hold-it-out-in-front-of-your-face method, which I felt looked ridiculous but started using when no one was around. Of course I had no idea yet how any of the pictures would look, but I had figured out a few things in its basket of tricks. The whole thing seemed to imply a lot of work on a computer.

My car, a bare few weeks old, already looked grizzled. I could win bets claiming this car was only six weeks old. Even overloaded it got 40MPG on the last tank. The speakers sounded good but I'd yet to figure out the radio (What the hell is FM2?) and my one stab at reading the car manual depressed me to no end.

My GPS had not yet come out of the box, and I’d hardly gotten lost at all.

Lake Tahoe

7/25/08
When I first started planning my trip I figured I would skip Lake Tahoe; it just didn’t sound like my kind of place. But I did some reading and people said that even if you didn't think you'd like Tahoe you should go, as you'd be surprised. Well I went, and I guess I'm on the fence. It sure wasn't the highlight of my trip. The first thing I learned is to stay off the roads – road, really - as much as possible. Driving in at 9:00 AM was hell, with heavy traffic not remotely concerned with the speed limit. Desperate to get off the road, I grabbed a $25 site at Sugar Pine State Park, pitched my tent and headed down to D.L. Bliss SP, where the beach is so popular you have to arrive early to get a parking spot. It was like Malibu or something: tans, loud music, water floatation devices. I ate breakfast in the shade and got the hell out. I went to another day parking spot and hiked down to the water through a better looking campground than mine and tried a little reading along the shore. It was hard to concentrate though, as a boat out on the lake was actually blaring Loverboy. Or Starship. Might have been Journey. I got the hell out of there too. Eventually I discovered that the best place for me was the beach accompanying my campground; I’ve even already paid for admission. I went there and enjoyed a lovely evening and a pink glowing sunset. Erhman Mansion.

The next morning I moved to a $15 spot at USFS’s Bayview CG. It was good enough, though a couple of guys nearby spent the whole afternoon drinking beer, never a good sign. One of the guys had come to camp with his ex-wife and their daughter while the other guy just latched on as a drinking companion. The two women split for a while and I saw them later when I went out to the viewpoint overlooking the inlet. A real mob scene and I head back to the campground. This is my take on Lake Tahoe. Early morning is good and after dinner hours are great, but midday is awful.

Fire conditions were volatile and the campground host was adamant that no fires can rise above the height of the firepit. But later in the evening these guys started throwing in tree trunks and soon had one shooting flames 25’ in the air. The host came racing across the campground yelling to get that fire down or the rangers would come and toss them out. I should have been so lucky. But without pyromania to keep them going, one guy staggered back to his site and everyone else quieted down enough and the night went well, until 5:00AM or so when the air is filled with the lusty sounds of the father who seemed to want the entire campground to know he was GETTING LAID. With the ex-wife, I could only hope.

The next morning I got up early and hiked to Mount Tallac, in the famously misnamed Desolation Wilderness. Tom Stienstra gives the hike a "10" in his Hiking California book but it is not a "10". It's an excellent workout to a grand view, but it’s not a "10".  (Describing a nearby hike to Gilmore Lake, Stienstra writes: "If you only have time to day-hike to one destination near South Lake Tahoe, Gilmore Lake should be your choice." He gives that a "9".) The view from the top down to Lake Tahoe is pretty much what you’d expect: a big blue lake. Lots of people like that type of view and despite the difficulty and the heat lots of people were up there liking it. But off in the distance to the west, I spotted some landscape that looked much more attractive to me: smaller lakes surrounded by granite and snow peak. I much prefer being IN the landscape to being above it. I asked another hiker about it and he told me how to get there. Like so many mountain areas, it is a lot closer physically than it is a drive to get there. I make a mental note to double back and do it next week, as the weekend is coming up and I do not wish to spend it in Lake Tahoe.



Desolation Wilderness and Aloha Lake from Mount Tellac

Pyramid Lake

7/28/08
For my weekend refuge I planned to go to Pyramid Lake, out in the Nevada desert about 70 miles northeast of Lake Tahoe. Pyramid Lake is routinely called one of the most beautiful desert lakes in the world. I was questioning the sanity of heading out into the desert in mid-July but I asked a couple of rangers and they didn’t blanch at the idea, so I went.

 It was 96 degrees when I got there but cooling down with a lovely late afternoon breeze. With no shade, surrounded by desert, the lake is basically the anti-Tahoe. It has nearly no development, and though it attracts a fair number of boaters and fishermen, they tend to congregate in the same places and the scale of the place swallows them up. I heard no Loverboy, or any other amplified music, the entire weekend.

I stopped at the Paiute Ranger Station for a camping permit and the ranger told me I could camp anywhere I wanted along the west side of the lake as long as I was more than 50 feet from the water. No tables, no firepits, a few pit toilets here and there. "This is primitive camping, my friend." Off-handedly she warned me to be careful where I parked as the sand out along the lake is thick.

I drove out to the far end of the road, where the ranger thought I would be happy. A few cars congregated in one area, though I didn’t see any people. I went a bit further and saw what looked like a good spot, then pulled over a bit and got out to check the softness of the surface I wanted to park on. I wasn’t really sure what was good enough, and don’t actually remember what I concluded because when I got back into my car I found I was already stuck. I gunned the wheels backward and forward, tried the cardboard under the tires routine, and dug myself a little deeper with each effort. I had been on the reservation for maybe a half an hour and I was already sunk in the sand .

I was more annoyed with myself than worried. I was free to camp where I was; I had what I needed for at least a couple of nights; there were people nearby; and it was Friday night, with pickups driving by along the main road a few hundred yards away. Surely I wasn't stranded. And in fact not more than an hour later a big pickup came bouncing along in my direction and I flagged him down. Young guy, long straight black hair and dark complexion. I didn't even have to tell him what the problem was, he stuck his head out and said "you're stuck?"

He told me he had done it himself once, and had had to walk several miles to get help. He said the rangers would do nothing more than call a tow truck for you. He didn't have a chain with him and said he could go back to his campground and someone was bound to have one. I thanked him and said not to worry about it now as I was ok for the night, but if he could come by tomorrow that would be great. He seemed grateful for that; he had driven out looking for cell phone reception. I went about my evening, which was simply mystical. I’m not inclined to try and describe the mystical. Let me just say the basic ingredients were dry air, endless vistas, desert scent, cool breezes, enormous star-filled sky, nearly total silence, and one sentient human being.

  
The morning was lovely only until the sun started climbing. The shade of my car gave out early and I went to sit under some cliffs. I found the owners of the nearby cars camped under the only trees around. I told them my story and they said they’d come lend a hand after breakfast. Eventually a party of 4 young men and a few small children came my way, playing frisbee golf along the sand. They pondered the problem for a bit and we tried to push it out but it was hopeless. One guy offered to drive me out to the ranger but I said I would wait on the guy from the night before who said he’d come back. I felt pretty confident he would. I retreated to my shade and not much later my friend came back with another guy and a chain and pulled me out in no time. The kid was concerned with my pride but my pride wasn't too damaged here. I was simply glad to be liberated. I gave them a $20 to share, and later felt a bit like a cheapskate.

Once free from the sand I drove around to the east shore, where the Paiute have recently barred camping but still allow day use. A smattering of picnics and umbrellas stretched along the beach. It was too hot and sunny for me at midday so I took to the only shade I could, opening my car trunk to create just enough shade to sit in, cook, eat, read. When things cooled down a bit I went swimming in the lake, third one of my trip. It was warm as a bathtub.

The main attraction for me was the assembly of tufa formations in and around the lake. Tufa is created when calcium-rich freshwater springs up into carbonate-rich lake water. These cause a chemical reaction that creates solid limestone, with a tower building up atop the spring into the lake water. Individual pieces look like brains. Here along the east shore some of these formations take on shapes considered sacred by the Paiute: the Great Stone Mother, and her baby’s basket. I spotted them right away. Very impressive. When light was good I went to take some pictures but a large group of families was assembled beneath them. I approached gingerly, not wanting to disrespect some religious activity, and when someone finally acknowledged me I said I wanted to take pictures and they said sure. They weren't Paiute anyway, just using it for picnic shade.

Great Stone Mother with Baby Basket

With sunset coming on, I reluctantly drove back to the other side of the lake. The early evening glow over treeless lake meadows was very beautiful. I found a small parking area and camped on a lake overlook that seemed an unlikely campsite but was legal and wonderful. Possibly the best campsite I would have the entire trip, though I would say that about 15 more times.

On the way out I stopped at the Paiute Visitors Center, probably the most beautiful human-built structure I would see the entire trip. I kick myself now for not taking a picture. I can’t even find a good photo on the internet. If you’re ever in Nixon Nevada…