My goal was to cover all of section N hiking in only one direction (southbound when feasible) since I was traveling with companions who might provide car shuttles. As it happened, I ended up somewhat short of Belden, but it will still be there in future years. Maybe the Chips Creek route will be repaired by the time I am in section N again.
Sun Jul 1 - Burney Falls car campground - Hot showers are two quarters for five minutes. No free showers, not even cold ones.
Mon Jul 2 - 25 mi - Road 22 (1392.5-4660) north to Burney Falls Campground (1417.5-2950). The ideal one-way-day-hike situation is to get dropped off in the morning and hike back to camp. This requires drivers to keep hikers hours, typically very early in midsummer heat.
There was a big water cache just south of Road 22, maintained by Amigo, but I didn't realize that today, and dropped off a couple of bottles of Crystal Geyser about a mile north of Road 22. I hope that whoever uses them will pack out the empties.
Page 417 of the guide book contains a misleading photo of the "small reservoir" (1394.4-4140). Evidently the book was scouted during the optimal time for this section, which is earlier in the year than a through-hiker would be present. The through-hiker situation is more like this.
The Hat Creek Rim is much more beautiful than I had imagined, at least in the cool of the morning. The 1987 fire only burned about half the forest. The rest is fairly open forest.
It had been pleasantly cool and breezy up on the rim, but when we descended down below it started getting warm.
I thought my companion Linda was making a lot of noise with her hiking stick but in time it turned out that a burly bearded fellow with a pick was digging noisily into the lava beds. I thought he might be doing some kind of trail maintenance for the PCTA, but it turned out he was about 100' off the trail in the brush. He didn't volunteer any information and we didn't ask.
There is a Forest Service sign about water at Rocky Jewel Mine. I think that must have been the cinder operation on the Cassel-Fall River Mills Road, which seems to have no buildings left standing.
Although the wildflower season was mostly past, we did find some lovely trilliums down in the lava beds below the rim.
Giant footprints mark the trail's crossing of the Cassel-Fall River Mills road. Although Mt Shasta loomed slightly larger, cold and snowy, it was getting quite a bit hotter for us. Going north, we didn't encounter any other hikers at all that day, though we followed fresh northbound horse hoof-prints all the way from Road 22.
NOTE: The Crystal Lake Fish Hatchery is well worth a visit. There is a public restroom with potable water in the sink, a big deal to us by this point since the temperature was getting into the 90's and may have topped 100. The breeder trout looked tasty, but no shady picnic tables were evident at the hatchery or anywhere else nearby.
NOTE: The PCT should be re-signed slightly to follow the "Fishing Access" road to Baum Lake, and a new restroom (no water or tables though) and a nice clean trail around to Crystal Lake, instead of the current PCT alignment "through poison oak" 100 yards to the west.
We rested for an hour in the shade by the fishing access, in the abandoned original hatchery tanks, before trudging on in the increasingly oppressive heat. Over a ridge under power lines, then down to cross highway 299, and another 7 miles of relatively uninteresting forest. The maps suggest views of Lake Britton but there weren't any good ones through the trees.
We finally crossed highway 89 and then the first bridge over dry Burney Creek, to find the famous Burney Falls Backpacker Camp, which however seems to be accessible by road too - but all the car camping facilities, including store and showers, are across the second bridge over Burney Creek, which is now a river. We did see some horses in the corral which may have been the ones we followed.
NOTE: This backpacker camp is directly on the PCT on the west side of Burney Creek, between the two bridges, not in the car campground on the east side as shown in the Town Guide.
Burney Falls itself is not to be missed, and is a short distance downstream from the second bridge.
Tue Jul 3 - 21 mi - Road 22 (1392.5-4660) south to Hwy 44 Old Station PO (1371.6-4580). I was dropped off at road 22 and thus was able to hike to camp at the Hat Creek Resort, saving a complicated evening rendezvous. My companion fished in camp to recuperate from the previous day's heat.
I met my first northbound through-hiker today, Vince , who was filling up at Amigo's cache , just north of Road 22, which was about half empty and may be dry by now if not resupplied - I added two more bottles of Crystal Geyser. Vince was in a hurry to get to Castella PO before it closed on Saturday. He commented that he didn't bother with sunscreen any more, and also that showers no longer worked for him - a tub bath was required to really soak off the trail dirt.
One enters the area of a major 1987 burn about the time one reaches the site of the Hat Creek fire lookout, which was burned up in that fire and replaced with a communications structure with signs warning against climbing on it for a better view.
One re-enters forest briefly around the head of the Lost Creek canyon, a good place for a lunch break. Way down in the canyon, Lost Creek bursts forth fully-formed and would indeed make a good water source though a steep cross-country descent and ascent would be required.
It started to cloud up after lunch and I feared a thunderstorm, but after a few drops nothing more happened. But I was distracted enough to miss the side trails to Grassy Lake and Bridge Campground that branch off the PCT.
Near "Mud Lake" and Highway 44, the PCT reaches the cool shady Highway 44 trailhead consisting of picnic tables, a toilet, trash cans... but no water.
NOTE: A little further along is the Hat Creek Rim Vista Point, too new to be in the guidebook, with vandal-proof picnic tables and telescopes and toilets and... no water.
The PCT continued waterless from here to Lassen Park until about 1992, when it needed rebuilding after the fire, and was rerouted to give the economies of through-hikers and Old Station a lift. The rerouted trail drops below the rim here and passes into the valley floor, through brushy lava and various unsigned cross-roads that can be confusing to southbound hikers. Eventually highway 44 is crossed and a real cave entrance is right on the trail, serving as an impressive warning to tread lightly on these lava plains.
The settlement of Old Station is a few miles east of the junction to the Old Station Post Office/Hat Creek Resort, with the Hat Creek Campground (site of Crestfest this year) in between on the highway, and a surprising hill in between on the trail's path, the only southbound uphill today. I met Anna, another northbound through-hiker, trying to catch up with Vince after having been passed by him while she took a week off, and then David, April, and Aaron, section-hiking southbound from Castella to Belden and taking a rest day at Hat Creek Resort (they said section O was as bad as advertised). Turning in to the Resort, I found my hard-working hiking and driving companions. As advertised, the resort and store owners were incredibly friendly and helpful, and all through hikers should plan to stop there for a recovery day. The consensus of written comments in the store's register was to minimize contact with Belden in preference for Old Station. Motel and cabin rooms were in the $65 range. The resort has coin-operated washing machines.
Wed Jul 4 - 24 mi - Hwy 44 Old Station (1371.6-4580) south to Warner Valley Campground (1348.1-3670).
My wife declined to rise at 6 am in order to drive me for two hours around to Warner Valley Campground in Lassen Park, preferring to meet me there in the evening between 6 and 7 pm, thinking she understood how to get there. So I started out from the front door.
I met another southbound section hiker as he was packing up for a leisurely day. He allowed as to how many through-hikers seemed obsessive-compulsive to him, and that it would take him three days to get to Warner Valley. Hat Creek flows nearby here, and many car campers were there to celebrate a glorious Fourth.
The route up to Lassen Park goes through a same-size same-age same-species tree plantation laid out in alarming geometric regularity for a couple of miles, which finally ends where the current and previous PCT and the much older Nobles Emigrant Trail come together to climb the canyon leading beside Badger Mountain to the park boundary. There I found a good trail register with the names of the hikers I'd met recently, and then ran into two more northbound through-hikers .
It was a relief to enter the park and see green grassy meadows and unmanaged timber for a while, though all the Lassen Park trails seemed to be old roads until I finally passed Lower Twin Lake. I skipped the Cluster Lakes detour but somehow missed seeing Soap Lake just off the trail. Perhaps I was distracted by the orderly piles of wood that had been set up alongside the trail, perhaps to be burned in the fall, to reduce the fuel load. Lassen has had its share of burns, and they are inevitable in this porous volcanic soil with plentiful moisture during growing season and no moisture at all during burning season. There are hardly any views of Lassen Peak itself from the PCT in Lassen Park, so I had to take a few close ups from a car window on the park road the next morning.
I finally reached Lower Twin Lake with its fine black sandy beach, where David, April, and Aaron were resting. Despite winds putting whitecaps on the water, I wandered out a few feet into the water to cool my toes. This was the highlight of this day's efforts. The wind probably kept the mosquitos at bay too. Further around the lake, I encountered the first hikers on this trip who appeared to be actually hiking TO someplace (Twin Lakes) rather than ALONG the PCT.
A lowlight of the day was the Grassy Swale flower and mosquito factory, endured by putting on all my clothes, followed by a rock ford of Kings Creek marred by a slip and wet feet, and then a sweaty little climb up Flatiron Ridge. I had always envisioned Lassen as mosquito country, and through-hikers are destined to be there at the peak of that season.
Finally a rocky descent into Warner Valley - much more like a Sierra Nevada trail than I'd seen so far - led past views of Drakesbad guest ranch to Warner VALLEY Campground, where I caught up with David, April, and Aaron again. Aaron needed to hitch back to Redding the next day, so I offered him a ride back to Old Station. David and April were hauled off to Drakesbad by the campground hostess/concierge who'd radioed in dinner reservations for them, and Aaron and I settled in to wait for my wife. 7:00 came and went and I began to wonder what plan B might be, since I had no camping gear. She, meanwhile, was at Warner CREEK Campground wondering where I might be, and at 7:00 doubt reared in her mind as she noticed that she was not anywhere near Drakesbad, and so decided to go further up the bumpy road to see if I were there. We managed to get Aaron and his equipment in the van and bounced back to Old Station in an hour and a half by going east from Chester to highway 44 rather than west to highway 89 and through the park road. Interestingly, despite being July 4, neither Warner VALLEY nor Warner CREEK campgrounds were anywhere near full - we might have camped there if we'd known.
Back at Old Station, Linda had sought angling advice from Doug, the store owner, and accordingly bought some night crawlers and limited out on trout from Hat Creek, right next to the highway and the resort. Aaron was able to get a room at the resort and we invited him to dinner on the excess trout, while the resort staff and guests had a big horseshoe picnic nearby, and a lovely full moon rose later. Not a bad way to spend July 4, and no forests consumed by illegal fireworks. (On the way home on July 6 I noticed that one can obtain his illegal fireworks from the High School Boosters Club in Hamilton City, on highway 32 west of Chico.)
Thu Jul 5 - 18 mi - Warner Valley Campground (1348.1-3670) south to Hwy 36 (1329.7-4990). Linda was ready to hike again, so we got dropped off at Warner Valley in the morning, after driving for two hours from Old Station, and we got picked up on Highway 36 in the evening to get to our evening accommodation at the Chester Manor Motel.
NOTE: There is now an official trailhead parking area between Warner Valley Campground and Drakesbad.
The first highlight of this piece was Boiling Springs Lake , the sort of feature that one comes to Lassen to see.
The second highlight is Terminal Geyser , a fumarole belching steam and boiling water. It's a quarter mile down the hill from the trail, but worth it.
NOTE: the guidebook mentions a spur trail halfway down, and a capped 1978 geothermal well, neither of which is in evidence; Park Service rehabilitation efforts have rendered these, and the former road to the fumarole, much less evident.
We encountered two apparent northbound through-hikers this morning, men traveling alone and apparently not inclined to stop and chat. In most of section N one can assume that people on the PCT are there specifically to hike the PCT, but near these Lassen geothermal features one encounters conventional hikers just using the trail to get somewhere.
The PCT continues to Little Willow "Lake" which has reverted to a brilliant green mosquito swamp rather than a lake. Since this is near the south boundary of Lassen, there is another trail register which however filled up last year and has not been replaced, but has been vandalized by an anti-equestrian provocateur who also wrote "horses prohibited" on all the Forest Service signs along the trail to the south.
NOTE: Distracted by the trail register and perhaps looking for the lake, many southbound hikers may do as we did and circle around the lake until the trail switchbacks sharply and rises UPhill to a ridge marking the park boundary and the first clearcut. This was probably a PCT temporary route in previous years, since a logging road terminates in the clearcut. The current PCT route turns DOWNhill at the trail register and follows the outlet streambed. Northbound hikers will not be confused here.
The PCT follows a long ridge down to the Domingo Springs trailhead (the springs and campground are to the east along a road) and thence to a bridge crossing the cool North Fork Feather River, where we found David and April once more.
After cooling our feet, we started up the grade to Stover Mountain.
As we watched the miles to Belden tick away VERY slowly on each Forest Service sign, we climbed Stover Mountain and then crossed its flat burned (or clearcut) summit. We finally arrived at the Stover Camp spring which had plenty of water in a green pond but a fairly small trickle out; purification is definitely in order here, especially since this camp is also a car camping spot. The mosquitos love it though; northbound through-hikers might prefer to fill up and then camp further up on Stover Mountain for a better breeze and an earlier start.
While we were snacking downstream from the spring, along came Bruce from Idaho who was looking good and moving well but related his share of woes on his through hike so far, including a sinus infection near Tahoe and a missing supply shipment at Belden. We encouraged him to spend a night at Old Station to recover, an inevitable rest in his case since he couldn't get there in time to reach the post office before it closed on Saturday.
Finally we reached highway 36, roughly the half way point between Campo and Manning, right on time at 8:00 pm. Our ride was waiting in the appointed place, and off we went to the Chester Manor Motel, a very nice place to spend a night. We had a fine Chinese restaurant dinner, and the next morning an enormous pancake breakfast at Dan's Family Restaurant adjacent to the motel. But Linda's blisters were too impressive to hike any further, and my family was tired of the Lassen vicinity, so we all drove home.
The rest of section N, Hwy 36 (1329.7-4990) to Belden (1283.2-2330), will have to wait until next year.
Links:
