Today was (despite the title) a much better day than the previous few days. With work mostly done, I could focus on the trip, and with not too hectic of a day, we could go slow.

We slept in for a little while, got a late-ish breakfast, and packed up. We left around 11 and began the 90 minute drive to the camp site at Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Traffic and a couple of stops to check out the scenery made it a little longer, but we got to the campground around 1. Right before we entered the park, we saw a bear and 2 cubs cross the dirt road ahead of us. We set up the tent, ate lunch, and started the 5 mile hike up Cinder Cone around 2. It’s only a 900ft elevation gain, so it should be easy-ish.

That assumption was wrong. The hike starts off gently-ish enough – mostly flat along side the Fantastic Lava Beds. It’s a little strenuous owing to the sand-like soil, making it hard to get good traction up even slight hills.

Then we got to the cone. It seemed steep-ish, but not horrible from the base. We started up around 2:45.

It is deceptively steep. It hurt. You’d go up 10 ft for every 10 feet you went forward. And the path is mainly loose volcanic soil. I felt like maybe we couldn’t do it at times. But the top of the path always seemed to be close at hand. The matter wasn’t helped by the fact that the past week (and even the previous night) we’d been under 700ft in elevation, and the hike started at 6,100ft, with the top being at a mere 6,933ft.

Somehow, I made it up. The trail suddenly gave way to an immense cone in front of me with great views of the lava beds and Mt Lassen. Lara finished the ascent a few minutes later. We hiked around the rim for a bit, I descended in to the cone (which sucked to get out of), and we went down. During the descent, I realized that I now strongly dislike the sound of wind over rocks and through trees, thanks Red Gap!

We stopped often for Lara to try to figure out which rock was the coolest, and took the long loop back to the trail. All said, the hike took about 3 hours and 45 minutes and was 6 miles.

Back at the camp, we made food, had a small campfire, and then retired to the tent. A good return to camping so far.

Tomorrow: drive through Lassen, maybe a brief hike or two, leave the Cascades (and therefore the PNW), enter Nevada, and stop in Fallon.

Stats: 9 National Parks, 13 hikes, 60 miles.