We drove up June 22, had lunch at the Chevy's in Redding, and got up to Lassen late afternoon. We decided to camp in the Butte Lake camp area. We pitched our tent and set up camp. It was quite a nice camp for us all (including teddy) and even for visitors. That first afternoon we decided to hike up over the end of a lava flow next to our camp to see Butte Lake. When we got to the top we saw uh oh, no lake. We walked along the flow until we eventually did find Butte Lake (to the left unseen in this image).

The next morning we climbed Cinder Cone. From the top there were nice views of Lassen peak and of course of the Fantastic Lava beds with Skaggs Lake in the distance. We got to look inside the cone and see where lava later exited from the base of the cone. Here's a shot of Claire on top with Lassen in the background. We down climbed on the southern side and visited the ice cave (sadly no ice, even late June, but cool) and some crags where we had a snack. We also got to explore some lava tunnels before coming off Cinder Cone and taking a shot by a fun downed tree.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was the swim in Butte Lake that evening. Here is a shot of Faye and Claire out on the lake and later of one when they were swimming in. That swim was a proud papa moment. We also took a trip to Susanville that day and did a loop around Lake Almanor (seen in a later shot from near Lassen peak).

The next day (Thursday 6/24/04) we did a lot of exploring. We took this shot of Lassen reflected in Hat Lake and got lots of pictures of the snow still in the area around the peak like this one showing red snow and this one showing blue ice. We didn't get into Bumpass Hell because there was too much snow (still almost in July), but that gave us time to explore further. We wound around south of the park and headed up to Drakesbad where we visited Devil's Kitchen where we got our fill of stinky streams and stinky boiling pots. One nice thing about Drakesbad is that we were able to go on a horseback ride (Claire mounted and Faye mounted) to Boiling Springs Lake where there were some interesting colors and views. Our wrangler is going to Cal this upcoming year and was a lot of fun for the girls to talk to on the trail.

If anybody is interested in more about Lassen, here is the National Park Service Web site for Lassen National Park that includes this map of the Lassen National Park.

All in all a gread trip. Short but sweet.