Manifest Part 2 (Lassen)
Chapter 4: The Journey to Lassen
After waking up early in the morning, Jeff and I walked to get the car. It was a white 2021 Camry. Despite its suboptimal acceleration, it would provide ample storage, shelter, and transportation for the rest of the trip. Nate graciously sent us on our way, and the manifest team was bound for Lassen.
Along the way, we needed some cooking gear and food supplies. We stopped in a quaint town called Vacaville right off I-80 for a Costco and a Goodwill run. We loaded up on food supplies, which included a chicken bake and a hotdog, and purchased a cheap saucepan. The food supplies also included a full rotisserie chicken (Jeff's brain child) that we kept warm by placing the chicken behind the headrest of the rear seats.
The drive passed quickly as we bantered about life and listened to road trip music. As we entered Lassen Volcanic National Park and the phone signal cut out, a period of clarity and lack of urge to check my phone would bless me for the rest of the trip.
Chapter 5: Lassen Volcanic
Lassen really is a hidden gem. Prior to the planning of the trip, I had never even heard of it. It's like a baby version of the geothermal activity of Yellowstone combined with a big snowy mountain peak from the Rockies. The road up to Lassen peak trailhead was filled with sulfur fountains, icy lakes, areas affected by wildfire, and road pullouts that featured rocks that had been blasted several kilometers from Lassen peak by its eruption early in the 20th century. It doesn't have the individual grandeur of Yellowstone or Yosemite, but Lassen does contains bits and pieces of the more famous National Parks.
We would get to the trailhead of Lassen Peak on day two pretty late in the afternoon. Given that the hike started at 8,000 feet altitude, was roughly five miles round trip, and had 2,000+ feet of incline, we decided to circle back to the trailhead the next day. We spent the rest of the day driving through Lassen and ended up at a nice campsite with good utilities just outside the park itself. We intended to cook some of the Kraft Mac N Cheese that we bought from Costco, but a nice lady saw a hungry-looking Sam Kumar wandering the campsite and decided to donate a Costco pasta to us. The campsite had a lot of pre cut firewood that it looked like it was trying to get rid of, so we also crafted a small campfire and chatted a bit before heading to sleep.
Chapter 6: Lassen Peak
Our morning was a bit slow. I boiled some water from our stove and we made oatmeal. To give it a bit more nutrients and flavor, we added peanut butter to it. This would prove to be a staple breakfast for the rest of the Manifest journey. We returned to the Lassen Peak trailhead. To our dismay, there was a ranger waiting at the trailhead. We panicked a bit because the Lassen Volcanic Visitor Center had a sign that read microspikes were required to make it to the top. Fortunately, we saw some random asian people hiking on the trail in crocs and the ranger seemed pretty chill with it.
The hike itself wasn't as exhausting as I thought it'd be. Sure, it was tiring, but the air wasn't too thin, and the ice on the trails provided engaging terrain to climb. The incline was steep and we found ourselves taking a solid number of breaks in order to make it to the top of the peak. As we ascended the peak, more and more of the features I mentioned earlier became visible: the icy emerald lakes, the destroyed wildfire areas, and other snowy peaks. The top came a lot sooner than I thought and featured a long horizontal traverse across a platform of snow. For some reason, the peak had a good bit of bugs and we didn't rest up there for too long.
The hike down from the peak was much more exhausting in my opinion. The steep decline wore down my knees and quads. When I returned to the car, my legs had a slight quiver.
Dinner that night consisted of In N Out Burger. Once again, we were too lazy to get to a dark campsite and cook our Kraft Mac N Cheese, so we just ate In N Out Burger at some town called Medford off of I-5. They give out free paper hats if you ask, so we all got a paper hat. We'd wear these paper hats during entry into national parks and sporadically throughout the rest of the trip.
