Little underrated geothermal wonderland.

When I planned our first road trip out West, we didn’t have anything to do between the Redwoods and Lake Tahoe. Stumbling across Lassen on the map was such a happy accident.

The more I read about it, the more I looked forward to going. Painted Dunes, Cinder Cone, Bumpass Hell, Sulphur Works, Lake Helen, Lassen Peak… there’s so much cool stuff to see.

My original itinerary is so hilariously confident looking back on it now. Absolutely nothing went to plan, but yet everything worked perfectly.

We woke up from dispersed camping in the mini van somewhere around Hayfork, California. The wildfire smoke was thick and my throat was hurting from a night of breathing it. We drove to Redding, CA around 5:30AM and were greeted with lots of sketchy people hanging out in every parking lot, and eventually found solace at a Starbucks where we took turns brushing our teeth so we could always keep eyes on our car.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we were one of the first people to enter the park that morning. We arrived around 8AM and had it all to ourselves. It was FORTY DEGREES (F) on September 1, foggy, threatening a rain/snow combo, and I was literally wearing every warm piece of clothing I packed all at once.

On the drive in, we passed the results of the 2021 Dixie Fire and it was pretty harrowing. It’s sad to think that this area is *currently* on fire all over again. If you plan to visit Lassen, be prepared to research the fire danger. Right now, the entire main park road is closed due to “extreme fire danger” (mid-August 2024).

And we stopped at a few random trailheads just to scope them out. I’d never seen a warning about bobcats before and I felt super spooked.

Lassen Peak: Nope #1

We started with an attempt to hike Lassen Peak. There was a pile of snow on the ground by the parking lot which I found so crazy.

By the time we made the quick walk from the parking lot to the start of the trail, we were soaking wet, couldn’t raise our heads to look ahead of us because of the wind + rain, and couldn’t even see the car anymore because of the fog.

We aborted mission.

Lake Helen: (Kinda) nope #2

Then we drove straight to Lake Helen (typically a perfectly pristine, crystal blue, alpine lake). I knew in my heart we weren’t going to really get to see it. And I was right, it was covered in fog and you wouldn’t know it was there unless you knew it was there.

But I don’t know… I was seriously just still so excited to be there I pulled the van over and ran down to the shoreline to dip my hands in the impossibly clear and cold water. I was touching it!

I scurried back to the car and we drove next door, but on the other side of the road, to the Bumpass Hell trailhead parking lot. (There are bathrooms here! And at Lassen Peak too.)

By this point we’d seen three cars total, no actual humans, and we had the parking lot to ourselves.

Bumpass Hell trail: 1000000/10

When I say I had every warm piece of clothing on me, I’m not kidding. Normally I’m one to opt for being cute but all that was out the window.

We started the trail to Bumpass Hell and were surrounded by fog on all sides and had no idea what the view actually looked like. In hindsight, we probably went faster because of this since we weren’t stopping to ooh and aah about how beautiful it was.

Eventually, it started to stink. And the rocks started looking weird. We were almost there! But not before getting to a little information plaque that warns you not to touch anything so you don’t burn your skin off.

It was so beautiful… otherwordly… mindblowing. We have nothing like this on the East coast, and now my love of all things geothermal is sparked forever.

The valley is centered around a milky grey stinky boiling river surrounded by boiling mud pools. And we had the entire place to ourselves for almost an hour. WHAT.

This boardwalk brings you along the boiling stream, leads past the Pool of Acid, and to an overlook area where you can look back on everything from above.

As soon as the first people joined us, we headed out to let them have it to themselves too. Hopefully they enjoyed it.

On our way up and out, we passed so many people that had waited for the weather to break. I’m so glad our original plan fell apart so we could have this special experience. It felt really satisfying to be ‘those people’ who are hiking out when everyone else is hiking in.

Like I said, the fog prevented any view we had on the trail on the way in. But by the time we were back there, the fog was lifting and we had the most perfect view of everything we’d “missed” before.

The entire place was stunning. This part of California is so damn beautiful.

And this time we could take our time staring at it (including Lake Helen in all of her blueness!!!).

Sulphur Works: Stinky number two, I love you

On the way to the visitor’s center for lunch, stickers, and our National Parks Passport stamp, we stopped at Sulphur Works. You park in the parking lot and walk a concrete sidewalk to two boiling mud pools, one bordering each side of the road.

Like it sounds, it smells like stinky sulphur eggs (like Bumpass Hell does, but more). It’s weirdly humid and the fog coming off the pools is yucky and thick. Nature is so cool.

Leaving Lassen

We ate lunch at the cafe in the visitor’s center, collected ourselves, and got our Passport stamp.

We had plans to drive into the Tahoe National Forest to some campground reservation we had and settle in for the night.

It took us two hours to get there, and unfortunately we found our campground to be a muddy waterlogged mess. And with more rain on the way, we worried the van would get stuck overnight. So what then?

We were planning to head to Lake Tahoe in the morning so we just said eff it and drove a few more hours straight there.

It was the best decision we could have made. Instead of camping in the rain, we ended up at Richardson’s Holliday Inn which was a super cute motel, in their last available room, with a super comfy bed, our first real shower in days, and next to the most delicious and adorable BBQ spot in Tahoe.

This is the day I truly realized that no matter what went “wrong” on our trip, everything was actually going right. It became so easy to lean on that feeling and to trust our intuition within the flow of everything.

And the good things just kept happening.

And I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t shout out this NPS-managed vault toilet that saved my life when we got turned around in the Tahoe National Forest without cell signal. ❤

To learn more about Lassen: https://www.nps.gov/lavo/index.htm

Learn about the Lassen Peak trail: https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/hikelassenpeak.htm
And about Bumpass Hell: https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/hikebumpasshell.htm

Visit Steven’s Holliday Inn: https://www.stevensonshollidayinn.net/
And Char-Pit BBQ: https://www.yelp.com/biz/char-pit-kings-beach-3