Bumpass Hell (ha)

***A quick note: I’m sorry to have been so late on blog posts! I am back in Austin and working and we are on crunch time here. But rest assured, I will get them out! Anyways, proceed…***

8/6/2017

I cleared out of the campsite surprisingly early – usually I move at a pretty glacial speed in the morning, but today I wanted to go hike Lassen’s most popular trail: Bumpass Hell! (No, I will never get tired of saying this name) The forecast predicted thunderstorms for the late morning, which is not exactly ideal for hiking in a high elevation, exposed geothermal basin. But you do what you gotta do.

My hike, which had to go the “back way” to avoid snowfall and closed trails, started at Cold Boiling Lake. This lake is rather uncreatively named – it’s cold, it appears to be boiling, and it’s a lake. What’s interesting about it is that the apparent boiling water is actually escaping gas that’s trapped in pockets under the lake.

There’s actually a Boiling Springs Lake in Lassen Volcanic National Park as well, and it is truly boiling (or near boiling) with an average temperature of 125*F. So I guess it’s important to differentiate them by which one is cold.

I looped around the lake and then headed up the trail. After a brief hike through some sparse forest, I found myself in a meadow positively overflowing with flowers – it seems that Lassen Volcanic is still in full wildflower bloom! So here’s a ton of cool flower pictures. I took about a hundred so be thankful you’re only seeing ten. Or eleven, whatever.

The Turks Cap is my favorite flower, I think. Kind of rare here in this field so I took about a million photos of this one.

Just liked how pleasingly symmetrical this flower was.

The trail kept climbing, and I kept a very suspicious eye on the skies. There was a lot of haze from the nearby fires, but it also seemed that thunderstorm clouds were gathering. Hmmm. I ignored them in the pursuit of Bumpass Hell.

Finally, the trail crested the backside of the basin, presenting me with a spectacular overlook of steam vents, mud pots, hot springs, and various geothermal features that I can’t identify. And best of all: it was completely empty! This is a rarity for a national park, you see. Tourists tend to love them to death, a little bit. But because the Bumpass Hell trail was closed, there was no one down there, and it was glorious.

 

Crossing a small patch of snow before ascending the crest of the ridge.

Whoa! Totally different down in the basin with all kinds of crazy colors!

The boardwalk was closed, so I didn’t get to see the pools up close. But that’s okay, because my camera has good zoom and I was just really excited to not have to work hard to get people out of my photos. You see, a lot of the photos that you see here on this blog are surprisingly difficult to engineer. I’m not some magical photographer, I don’t use Photoshop, and I certainly don’t get up early, so it can be really hard to get a photo that’s not full of tourists, especially in the more crowded places. I won’t go off-trail to achieve a better shot, either – if a sign says “Stay on the Trail”, I’m staying on it – so it’s pretty essential that I have a good point-and-shoot camera for speedy shots, and even more essential to have a lot of patience.

Anyways, you guys probably don’t care about that kind of stuff. So back to the basin!

 

Some tenacious trees straddling steam vents.

I spent a good half hour wandering around up there, snapping shots and enjoying the relative solitude. I did pass one other hiker, another solo traveler like myself. But mostly it was me and some superheated steam clawing its way out of the ground in whatever way that it could.

As I explained in my previous post, this basin is said to be named for a guy named Bumpass who fell into one of the hot springs and burned the hell out of his leg. Well… after seeing this basin, I kind of don’t feel bad for him anymore. I mean really, this thing does not in any way look safe for a human to walk near. I don’t know what he expected, wandering around a clearly boiling spring. Maybe he thought he had found Cold Boiling Lake…

My uncharitable musings were interrupted by the roll of thunder announcing the arrival of the forecasted thunderstorm. So I skedaddled. On the way down the trail, I encountered the other hiker again and we made friends – her name is Jess, and she was on a solo trip similar to mine! We had a lot of the same destinations so we had lots to chat about, lots of stories to tell, and lots of tips to trade. I was very glad to have a fellow traveler to talk to. But alas, at the base of the trail we had to part ways, as I had promised to meet my dad in Lake Tahoe that evening.

I hopped on the road as the rain started. Jane grumbled her way along as the GPS informed me that I was, in fact, somehow nearly 5 hours away from my destination instead of 2.5 as I had previously thought. Whoops. We buckled down and made some good time, running through a few storms and eventually coming out into sunny Nevada, where I met up with my dad.

Saw a wildfire on the way.

Just stopped raining...

And 30 seconds later, all the water is wicked off my car! Good auto paint care products are important.  

My dad had flown out to meet me in Reno for Hot August Nights – which, by the way, starts in a couple of days! He saw Tahoe last year, so he was excited to show me the cool stuff that he and my mom had seen since I’ve never been before. Can’t wait!

Until then… Kelly signing out.