I got a special treat the other day. The chief of our resource division decided that I should see another part of the park so he took me with him to see a small chunk of what his job is about. This was very pleasing to me as it gave me a chance to see Warner Valley, an area that holds many of the thermal features, some of the more unique aspects of Lassen Volcanic National Park.

The Fen with a horse riding on it

It is also an area with a unique historic feature: Drakesbad. Drakesbad is named for a guy (Drake) who put a mining claim on the hot springs back before the park existed. He sold it to a doctor (Sifford) who built a bath (Bath=Bad in German) house with the usual claims of medicinal properties. The bath house grew into a ranch set up with a dining lodge and several cabins. The area was an escape for wealthy folks living in the Sacramento Valley. The Siffords, who incidentally helped get the national park created, eventually deeded the area over to Lassen in the 1970s where it has become an interesting tangle of competing interests.

The ranch with its buildings are old, a touch over a hundred years. This means they are classified as historic structures which thus deserve special protection. Their use as an escape/recreational venue is also a special cultural resource. The ranch is ran by a concessionaire that charges visitors for use of the facilities and pays the park a certain sum to help pay for maintenance of the buildings (which doesn’t actually pay for the cost meaning the park operates the ranch at a loss). The hot springs are a natural resource of obvious value plus there is a fen in the valley that it rare for the area, particularly because it is fairly acidic (from the hot springs) making it sort of similar to a bog. Also, the wilderness area begins a few miles up the valley covering the largest concentration of hot springs: the Devil’s Kitchen. Oh, also the Pacific Crest Trail passes right by the ranch, with hikers sometimes stopping to pick up packages. The park has legal mandate to manage for all of those uses. As an extra complicating factor the ranch has several wealthy users who have long family histories of visiting the area since before it was gifted to the park. These benefactors hold prominent positions on the Lassen Volcanic Foundation, a nonprofit that collects funds to pay for special projects in the park.

High schoolers measuring hot springs with NASA Rover guy guiding them

On this particular visit we were following a class from the Red Bluff High School. Some teachers down there had a great idea to partner with NASA scientists and study the biochemistry of the hot springs as a stand in for conditions on Mars. So for 9 years they have been visiting the thermal features of the park to identify the cyanobacteria as they vary from hot spring to hot spring based on acidity and temperature and so forth. It turns out Lassen has chemotrophs which use hydrogen sulfide as an electron acceptor instead of oxygen. Very cool and unusual. The students spent the night in the campground then spent the day dividing into groups and sampling the chemistry and bacterial mats of the various hot springs scattered up and down Warner Valley. They take the biological samples back to the school and attempt to raise them under laboratory conditions.

The NASA scientists (who are part of the rover Teams for Curiosity/Opportunity and Spirit) discovered that the manager at the Drakesbad Ranch was cleaning the bacterial mats out of the hot springs because the algae was clogging the filter to the pool. He figured he could take a broom to the stream channels, sweep out the algae, and increase the flow of water into the hot spring fed pool. The NASA guys got upset because their algae/bacterial mats were no longer under natural successional conditions as the mat was essentially restarting every 2 weeks when the channel was scrubbed. So the pool guy stopped cleaning the channel and the filter started getting clogged up and reducing the flow so the pool was colder and algae started getting into the swimming pool making it a less attractive green color. Jason, our resource chief, had the task of talking to the scientists and the concessionaires to find some happy median between the competing resources.

Devil’s Kitchen. A mess of geothermal features in the middle of a wilderness area. The bridge is illegal, but it crosses a small creek of sulfur-oxidizing bacteria at a measured pH of 1.3. You should not step it that.

At the same time we walked up to the Devil’s Kitchen where a number of visitors have requested the construction of a bridge over a small creek crossing. This is inside the wilderness area where the law mandates the area remain free from development and the signs of humanity. However the thermal feature is covered in bridges and railings, obvious signs of the manipulations of society and necessary to protect the frequently-visited and fragile thermal features. So, do we add a bridge (where most visitors have no problem crossing via a few rocks) in spite of the wilderness designation or do we leave the stream untouched in spite of the frequent visitors and slight hardship to a small number of older visitors?

National parks belong to all of us. That is why they are a fantastic symbol of democracy. But because we are such a diverse people providing for everyone’s use often leads to conflict. With full awareness of our own biases we must carefully explore options to benefit everyone, from the Martian NASA scientist to the Drakesbad pool boy.

View from the cinder cone of Mt Lassen

From the euphoric high of the cinder cone I could see for miles. Way off to the west the mass of Mt Lassen, the plug volcano, overshadowed everything. Tree-covered hills traversed the miles until the 20,000 acre Reading fire burn scar, still clearly marked by the roasted tree trunks covering the hills. My north side was filled by the nearby shield volcano, Mt Prospect. To the south the painted dunes which made up the foothills of the cinder cone morphed into the fantastic lava beds then Snag lake and finally into the far distant shield volcano, Mt Harkness, identifiable by its fire lookout tower. To my east was more cinder hills and lava fields until Butte Lake caped off the view with a entourage of much older cinder cones, all tree covered. From my 700 ft perch I picked Snag Lake as my destination, hoping for some reflective photos of Mt Lassen. All I had to do was go around the lava beds, or cut across them.

The Cinder Cone with Mt Lassen behind it

This was the wilderness area. This is what my job was all about. I had twelve weeks to help put together a list of measures to help the national park track if the wilderness areas were being managed to preserve their wilderness character. One of the aspects we were looking at was the ability of wilderness to provide for primitive and unconfined recreation. That means you can walk off the trail. Upon reaching the base of the cinder cone I headed into the lava field to face new challenges and learn what this wilderness could teach me.

The crater inside the cinder cone

The lava beds were about 350 years old, dating to the same eruption as the cinder cone I had just climbed. Apparently all the cinders had burst out the top while the lava oozed out the bottom. At first it was only about 20 feet tall, made up of volcanic bombs about the size of a microwave piled on top of each other. Not neatly. Some of them were loose and rocked at I began boulder hopping. The lava seemed to have formed in small ridges. I would try to walk along to top of one for a while and then dip down 10 or 15 feet to the bottom only to climb up 15 feet on the other side. It was wave after wave of black lava boulders. After a few tipsy boulders gave me the desire to take a breath I realized the danger of my predicament. I was off the trail on a Saturday in late September. I was heading deeper into the wilderness away from the parking lot at a time when most people were hiking out of the wilderness. If I broke a leg or twisted an ankle no one would find me on accident. I kept going.

Snag Lake off in the distance. About three miles.

The sun warmed the black rocks and reminded them of their fiery past. They willingly gave back the heat they adsorbed from the sun. I stumbled upon one or two saplings as I walked but mostly there was no life among the rocks. At the top of the waves I could see the tree-covered hills in the distance. I fixed my eyes on Mt Hoffman as an anchor point. If I kept moving towards it I would reach Snag Lake eventually. Probably less than two miles away. At the bottom of the ridges I could see nothing but lava. Dark, rough, sounding like glass and with incredible variety of form and color.

After an hour I regretted my decision. It was incredibly hard to judge distances in the lava field. My hilltop goal seemed no nearer for all my boulder jumping. I kept checking the clock to see if I had lost enormous amounts of time. Was this lava field much larger than I had gauged from atop the volcanic summit? My stomach reminded me of the hour and the bagel hiding in my backpack. No, I could eat it in the shade by the lake, wouldn’t that be nice? And the water? I had only brought a liter intending to go and return without much effort. And the day was fairly cool. Okay, I can have a little water.

The fantastic lava bed

I frequently stopped to confer with my official park map. It distinguished the lava flow with a slight pinkish color. The area I was in consisted of about an inch of paper, not much detail there. I lined up my chosen summits to reassure myself that I had picked a wise direction. And kept walking. What else was there to do?

Finally reaching one particularly tall ridge I saw Snag Lake again. Glorious! A destination at hand. Except for the field of lava still to cross. I knew that the lava had poured right into the lake meaning if I went directly for the lake I would find no easier terrain along the way. It would be water and lava. I could choose between going to the closer west side of the of lake (and then hiking 4 miles around the lake) or crossing more lava to reach the east side of the lake, closer to the car and more in line with my original plan. I ate some carrots, checked my map and my clock. I was actually right on time in spite of the paranoia of my thoughts. Crossing the lava had been easier than walking the miles around the flow. I continued to the east side.

Butte Lake with the lava flow behind it

If life were nothing but mountain peaks our decisions would be remarkably clear. We would see the miles into the distance and every option would have clearly defined consequences. We could see each step of the trail leading up the summit and know each tree that must be passed to return. But most of the time we aren’t walking on mountain peaks. We are down in the trenches, or covered in the trees. Every now and then we might glimpse the far off goal so that we might know which direction to walk but mostly we can only focus on the 20 feet before the next ridge, and often only on the next boulder to see if it will bear us or rock under our weight. When we are down in the lava we can check our map, drink a little water but ultimately we just have to keep walking and so reach the sparkling blue lake beyond. If we stop walking, we get nowhere.

There was nothing particularly spectacular about my hike through the lava. I’m sure others have gone before me and I escaped without injury of any kind. I reached the lake, found some toads, and had a lovely (long) hike back to the car (around the lava beds). However I am a bit more determined to keep walking when I am lost in the depths of the lava fields. To keep my heart focused on the distant promises even as my eyes carefully weigh each step. To resist the temptation to change course or turn back. Continually moving towards the goal regardless of conditions along the way.