Lassen Volcanic National Park
Part 7 in my National Parks blog series
LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK
June 13, 2025
This is the one I called out in my opening blog.
Ever heard of Lassen Volcanic National Park? Me neither. Which is part of the attraction of this idea. The goal of visiting all the national parks, including ones that are off the radar, promises to take me to places and have experiences that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Lassen is about a 4 1/2-hour drive from San Francisco, or less than four hours if you leave from Sonoma, which is what we did. We’ve been coming to Sonoma for years, tacking on this lovely little wine country town to various San Francisco business trips. We always stay at the old-West Sonoma Hotel and eat next door at The Girl and the Fig. It’s nice to have favorite spots in faraway places.
Sonoma helped me sell Caryn on the idea of joining me for Lassen.
We hit the trail at Lassen after a mixed-review stay at the Highland Ranch nearby (lovely cabin, beautiful views, loud neighbors). We had already noted the dead trees that covered one of the ridges. We learned that these are the charred remains of the 2021 Dixie Fire. This was the largest wildfire in California history, burning nearly 1 million square acres and over 1,000 homes. It took hundreds of firefighters 3 ½ months to contain the blaze. Once again, fire suppression efforts over recent decades played a role. That and a recent inundation of bark beetles, which kill trees, and the historic long drought that has affected the whole of the West.
Lassen is filled with “devastation zones” of completely burned trees and otherwise barren landscape. The other factor in June is the snowpack. Most of the trails are still closed or require boots and micro-spikes to manage the snow and ice.
We tried to drive up as far as the road was open. The unrailed road carved an unnatural ridge in the steep, bare mountainside. I found myself hugging, then riding the solid yellow line in the center. We crossed a freshly cleared rockslide. The road ahead got steeper with more hairpins. My brain decided it did not feel safe, so I used the next turnout to turn around.
We came back down and checked out Sulphur Works, an area of fumaroles (steam and volcanic-gas vents) and a big, bubbling mud pot. This is like a mini-Yellowstone, another volcanic region.
From there we checked out the visitor center, which included a short film documenting the history and geology of Lassen. It’s all about the volcanos, the most recent eruption being just over 100 years ago. We then took the one trail that was open, a 6+ mile hike through the burnt forest to a gushing waterfall. Four years after the fire and the area shows almost no signs yet of recovery. Some fungus is just starting to appear on some of the trees. Caryn and I talked about the time scale of nature vs our own. It’s another one of those perspective-setting moments.
I don’t think this will make the top 10 list once I complete my tour of the national parks. But Lassen gave us a glimpse into the powerful forces of nature and time that shape the world in which we live, and a chance to walk in it.