Friday, September 16, 2011

NorCal Weekend Trip: Lassen Volcanic National Park, Mt. Shasta, Redwood National Park

Getting closer to leaving for South America and there still so much stuff left to see and do in California. Been wanting to get up to Lassen Volcanic Park for a while but with the snow this year its been inaccessible until these last 2 months, Its getting ready to close again :eek3:

Boogied on up from San Francisco on Friday afternoon, Got to Lassen as the sun was going down.



Lassen Peak is the southern most Volcano of the Cascade mountain range which leads all the way up to Canadia, It is also part of the "Ring of Fire" which contains 75% of the worlds volcanic activity. She last blew her top in 1914, with subsequent explosions going on for a few years afterwards causing rock/snow avalanches that decimated the valley below

Lassen Peak


Nobody around today, searching for a good spot to camp before it gets dark.


Backside of Lassen Peak, you can see the mountain is basically stripped of all life and carved with deep gullys left behind by lava/sediment


Wildfires going on in the surrounding mountains made for some epic sunsets


Found a nice forest road, drove out into the woods and setup camp. Bottle of champagne is necessary in the woods.

Also got a chance to test out my new 12v fridge. WAECO CF-18. Compressor based fridge, as you can see its about the size of a cooler. Can fit 12 beers, a bottle of champagne, and food for 2-3 nights. Left it running all night with the truck off and it barely touched the batt. Awesome not having to deal with ice and all your stuff getting soaked. the beers were FROSTY :bowdown:





Got up the next morning and packed up. Headed back towards the park



We hiked to "Bumpass Hell" This is the most active volcanic section of the park, steam vents, mudpots, boils. You could smell the sulfur from the trailhead.

First view of the area, You can see the steaming vents/sulfate has erroded all the clay around the area. It sounded like a jetplane taking off as the steam constantly flowed out of the vents



They've built a boardwalk so you can walk around out there, apparently the surface isnt very thick and people dick around, fall through and burn the crap outta themselves. In fact they said the boardwalk used to extend further out until motherearth swallowed up a big portion :bowdown:





Cant really see too well but this was a boiling lake


Place was crowded so we jetted and went on a nice hike






Had more to see and do so we said goodbye to Lassen and drove about ~120 miles or so to Mt. Shasta





Got dark quick, basically just found another forest road, setup camp, drank more beers, made more big fires :costumed-smiley-007:

Woke up the next morning and headed to Redwood National Park on the West coast, Was about 300 miles or so from Mt. Shasta. We went through the mountains west of Shasta and came across this town which loved the hell outta BigFoot. Had to stop for some pics :rofl:







Eventually arrived at the park, It was late on Sunday afternoon so we basically had the place to ourselves. It was AMAZING walking around in a redwood grove by yourself. Its crazy to imagine the entire Westcoast line from Washington to Big Sur lined with these massive trees only a few hundred years ago before we logged the living crap outta them. Only something like 6% of the oldgrowth forest remain :(







Big arse trees


It was so beautiful you couldnt help but stand in reverence and awe


They also have 6 large herd of Elk that roam the park. Heres a big boy we came across


Found a nice coastline dirt/gravel road to explore





Left Redwood Nat park around 8PM and had to be back in SF for work in the morning. Got home around 3.

1100 miles, 22MPG, Truck now has 270,000 miles on it and ran like a champ.

ricer shots


5 comments:

  1. the 4runner's lookin good!...

    Sounds like I'm going to have to get the little Waeco once I sell my mondo-Edgestar, looks like the perfect size

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  2. Ya buddy, its the perfect size and the price is right. Weve only used it once so far but it was awesome

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  3. James and Lauren are my heroes! You have already seen and done more than most people do in an entire lifetime - bowdown:) But always remember to have fun and be safe!!!

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  4. Awesome trip! You drove very close to our our old home (Arcata), your photos made me miss it there...

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