Lassen National Park 3-7 July, 2003 cont.

lassenpeak
Sunday, 6 July 2003.  20:56pm.  Page Street.  I wimped out and ended up leaving today, the lakes and things i planned on hiking into today were also closed because of snow.  I guess Lassen had a record snowfall this year, and it's been very slow to melt, making access to the steeper, higher-altitude things unsafe.  

Last night was something...  I went to bed early, since I was back at camp at a decent hour, made myself a little fire, sat in the creek in my chair again cooling off in the eve researching the plant and animal life in the different zones of the altitude. chair in stream  (the chair in the stream)
 I came up with an educational list, which I'll share with you here, and a few lousy pitures with the crappy cam.  However- you might learn something.  I did!  Then I went to bed.  I had a couple of Mike's Hard Lemonades before bed, so I was super tired by dusk, and ensuring I'd sleep that night and be able to get up early.  I was thinking I'd move the camp to another location closer to the southeast entrance of the park, since all the hiking I wanted to do was in that region.  Most everyone was cleaing out after the holiday was over, so I knew there would be plenty of space avaiulable in the campground.  Anyhow- I had a wierd night.  I woke up at 4am having dreams about drinking water with mom- we were moving, and we were cleaning out the basement that little closet I made myself with those shelves I built in there myself under the stairs- all the clothes were mildewey and nobody had run the dehumidifier down there so everythning was really gross, but we had to get it out.  ??  I was so parched, I remember grabbing a bottle of water and dowing it then reaching for a second one and downing that.  I woke up super parched and having to pee really bad...  of course, it's 4am, pitch black and i had been reading about mountain lions and bears before I went to sleep, and thinking about Bigfoot so I was scaring myself stiff lying there, wide awake, bladder ready to explode and DYING for some water but too paranoid to move.  Every sound in the woods was hyperacture...  i watched the sky above, a plane went by and I saw a couple of shooting stars.  Finally, after lying there for a good hlaf an hour trying to work up the mental nerve to just open the zipper and get some rotten water from the table 5 feet away, and PEE, I managed to turn on my light, sit there another 5 minutes hoping anything that saw the light would go away, opened the zipper as fast as I could possibly do, grab the whole gallon of water from the table and scramble  back into the tent.  I didn't pee.
Instead, I laid ther till the sun was just coming up, my bladder at the breaking point, thirst quenched, wide awake.  Ugh.
I was literally UP at the crack of dawn.  So, with little else to do, I made coffee and packed up shop for the move south.  i was out by 5:45am. I drove through the park at this hour, with the deer ALL over, stopping with the good camera for some quality photo ops, headded for the King's Canyon trail where I would see King's creek falls, crumbaugh lake and cold boiling lake.  I was excited to see these, especially at this hour when the wildlife would all be out.  

To my dismay, everything in King's Canyon area is still CLOSED because of snow!  Rotten!  What to do now?  I went farther south hoping I could hike into Mills Creek Falls, and get to Crumbaugh Lake the back way at least.  That'a a longer hike, but i really wanted to see that lake.  THe Southeast walkin was seriously emptying out by the time I got there, campers all packing up for the weekend.  I would have plenty of spaces to pick.  The area is GORGEOUS.  It's this ravine edge of the woods- just below the tree line at pretty high altitude- Lassen Peak towering in the distance from the back side...  wow.  There were squirrels and deer all over the place, birds, it was great.  The hike is amazing- really amazing.  Probably the prettiest scenery I'd seen in the whole park so far.  You go through this very dense wooded area down these little switchbacks into the forest, cross Mills Creek over a bridge that leads into this gorgeous meadow- it's just alpine flowers and grass up the side of the mountain with the mornign sun shining bright.  I was totally in awe, it really took my breath away.
meadow  just doesn't do it justice...
not lookin so hot, but here's me- in the wooded part of the trail...  meinwoods
So I get across the bridge and I start hearing little noises behind me.  I seriously felt like i was being watched as soon as I got into that meadow.  It was super creepy feeling.  I kept trying to shrug it off, but it was really unnerving.  I knew it was too early for anyone else to be on the trail, so that's not totally safe for me to be hiking in alone, but i was really trying to shrug this growing creepy feeling off.
I paused and listened, dead still for 5 minutes, looking all over at the wooded areas around me, but nothing.  The trail, as I moved ahead, kept plunging down into the dense woods, and up again into that meadow area, up and down, up and down.  I heard a crackling noise behind me again- this time it sounded just like something or someone stepping on a branch and it cracking behind me- near behind me.  I was totally creeped out.  I realized that I had my pepper spray, but no knife.  I was thinking about mountain lions, this area would be the perfect habitat for them- really perfect.  They kill you by going for your neck or your gut.  I didn't really want to be eviscerated and eaten alive by a mountain lion on this trail- I guess the only way to get something named after you in a national park is for something really bad to happen to you- Edwards Hell...  I was really creeped out by this time.  The little hair on the back of my neck was standing up, and I kept trying to tell me i was just being paranoid, but this feeling wasn't getting any better, just worse...  I thought I could hear the rumble of the falls, so I made a deal with myself to go over the next crescent to see the falls.  I was pretty sure that was them, and i was in at least a mile at this point.  
Over the crescent were small falls, but not the big ones.  I turned back at that point, after looking all over from that vantage point, seeing nothing move.  I headded back- and I looked on the dirt trail at my feet for tracks, and sure enough, ALL around me were mountain lion tracks.  Some deer, some squirrels, some other things I didn't know what they were, but there were 4 inch paw prints.  No claws visible.  I have a little field guide to tracks in the park, and sure enough, there they were- mountain lion tracks.  AARGH!  I was surrounded by those rotten tracks.  
The trail back out was all uphill, but i was so freaked out i hauled my butt out of there so fast my thighs were burning.

I went to the chalet and had breakfast, reading my field guide to tracks and looking at the lions.  There are bobcats, linx, and mountain lions in the area.  The mountain lion and linx tracks are the same size and basically look the same, so it's hard to tell which ones I was looking at, but both are big, scary predators, and those mountain lions can get to eigth feet!  AARGH!  I was feeling much safer in the chalet with my bowels in my abdomen, where they belong...

So everything I wanted to see from there was bascially closed due to snow, so I thought I'd just head home instead.  I was starting to get hit by me lack of sleep last night, and the drive as seeming reallllllllly borrring...  somehow i made it home in 3 hours, just to find that the dog was in my house, WIRED, probably hadn'tbeen let out all freaking weekend, no Clay in sight.  I was, I AM FRUIOUS with this guy.  I'm cancelling my check first thing in the morning, changing the locks and getting another dogsitter.  This guy is a ripoff artist.

After dinner at Erin and Dan's house, and telling all my tales, I sit here looking at the pictures...  I hope you like the site.  Here's some of the cool stuff I learned while i was reading in the stream:

Lassen Peak is the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range, going all the way up the coast to Canada.  The two most famous volcanoes in the range are Mount Rainier and Mount Saint Helens in the Seattle area.  Lassen Peak stands at 10,457 feet, and its last eruption was in 1915.  There was a smaller one that was mainly steam in 1917, but nothing since.  Its brother to the southeast, Brokeoff Mountain, erupted much earlier, creating a lot of the park fetures today- its peak sinking slightly to the north.  Brokeoff Peak is 9235 feet.  
brokeoff peak lassen peak
Brokeoff Mountain  to the left, and Lassen Peak to the right.
Different trees, animals and plant life live at the varying altitudes- in their own distinct ecosystems.  From 1-3K feet, this is the Foothill Oak zone.  Here you see Digger pines, and oak trees.  3-6K is the lower montane zone where Ponderosa Pines, white fir and sequoia trees live.  From 6-8,5K is the upper montane zone and lodgepole pine, and red fir trees predominate.  (Most of the campgrounds in the park are in thise zone- in fact, most of what you see in the park are in this zone.  There is one pass over the mountains that reaches up to 8500 feet and you see some changes).  From 8,500-10,500 is the subalpine zone where whitebark pine and mountain hemlock trees live.  At 10,500+ feet is the alpine zone, and it is above timberline.  
Interesting.
So I sat in the stream with my field guide and looked around me at the trees and vegetation.  I saw a number of Quaking Aspen trees in my creekbed, a ton of lodgepole pine, and some other ones I wasn't sure about.  SO hard to tell for a layperson.  The ground and most trees are sporting patches of this fluorescent green colored "stuff" that looks like a clump of hair in a corner of the bathroom- this stuff is actually lichen- American Wolf  Lichen, to be exact.  I saw one solitary red plant jutting up out of the snow on the crescent of the drive over the mountain that looked out of place.  It was blood red, kind of like a hyacinth and I wondered that that thing was- it looked like somebody had planted it there, and it was the only one I saw the whole trip.  Come to learn, it's called a snow plant.  And they live in the lower montane zone.  
Palntwise, the ground was covered with phlox in white, purple and blue, western monkwood, and chicory.  
Wildlife wise, I saw one red hawk flying overhead- its red tail vivid in the sunlight, that was awesome.  I saw a turkey vulture flying overhead, too- you can't miss those ugly red beaks, one lone coyote run across the road, and a number of birds, including a Steller's Jay.  They're like the bluejays from the east coast, exept the heads are black and the feathers on the top of the head stick up like a cardinal's.  

Well, good night all.  I hope you enjoyed Lassen as much as I did.  Proably would have been better had I not been there alone to get freaked out about the mountain lion stalking me...  ha ha.

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