At last!  A travel entry for the travel blog!  Well, it was just a day trip, but I’m counting it.  This is cause for celebration!  Also, it’s a welcome distraction from my previous posts which were really channeling some bad energy this week (Hannah, don’t you ever describe my travel blog as emo again!).

I went up to Lassen National Park, which is one of my favorite local hiking spots.  I mean it’s only a 40 minute drive from my place, and it tends to be crowd free (today I virtually had the park to myself).  Normally I wait until June or so until I really start hiking up there, but I figured I’d check it out early season just to get a flavor for the type of weather I’m going to be experiencing up in the Canadian Rockies this summer.  True to form, the temperature remained brisk, and hovered between 45 and 60 degrees for the entire time I was up there.  Luckily, I went up there prepared, and wasn’t even slightly cold.  I even brought my snowshoes along.  And good thing, too.  Because the first thing I noticed when I got out of the car was snow.  Lots of snow.

I knew that the snow was going to make it difficult to day hike, but overall I know the park pretty well and I’m actually a pretty good trail finder, so I wasn’t too worried.  I put on my snowshoes, Thor and Ragnarok, and hit the trail.

The left one’s Thor.  The right one’s Ragnarok.  It’s really important to name your gear.

Yup.  Just cruising along the well-defined, easily discernible trail.  Nothing could be easierrrr….

Can you see the trail?

Okay, so it’s near impossible to see in this photo, but if you look really closely at that patch of trees near the middle, you will see a little tiny yellow dot on one of the trees.  That’s a trail marker.  In winter conditions like these, the goal becomes to locate these little tiny dots, which are placed on a single tree every 1/8 of a mile or so, until you (hopefully) reach your destination.  Of course, finding the dots is a royal pain in the butt, and I got lost (and had to backtrack) several times on this short two mile hike to Paradise Meadows.  Luckily, I had Mt. Lassen to the south of me to act as a compass of sorts.

This volcano last erupted on May 22, 1915.  They’re having some weird centennial thing up at the park to celebrate it.  Also, it’s near impossible to capture just how dominating this mountain is in a photo.

So around a mile and a quarter into the trek, two things happened: First, as this is a hike where you hike down into a meadow, I fell below snow level, so I was able to strap Thor and Ragnarok to my trusty daypack, Blueberry, and walk around au natural.  Second, I became hopelessly lost.  I couldn’t find any more trail markers for the life of me, and I started to panic because I thought that a black bear was going to come out of hibernation and try to eat me.  However, I was unwilling to turn back, so I just kept heading in the general direction where I felt that the meadow was located until…

I stumbled upon the meadow!  Now, with Mount Lassen behind me, and Paradise Meadow in front of me, I was able to make a bearing and discern the general direction where I knew the trail must be located.  I headed in that direction, and it wasn’t long until I found the manmade bridge leading me into Paradise Meadow.

I love you manmade bridge.

The meadow is beautiful, peaceful, untouched.  It’s one of my favorite places to go when I feel like I need to unwind and think about life.  It is also one of the least populated places in the park year round because it’s just a meadow – it doesn’t have the glamour of a lake or waterfall, which most people are seeking at the end of a hike.  I stayed there for a good amount of time, took photos, got hydrated, and had lunch.  It was great.  However, it had one drawback.  It is a meadow.  Have you ever seen the movie Bambi?  There’s truth in that movie.  When you’re out in the meadow, you really do feel vulnerable, and you have no idea what is rustling just beyond in the treeline.  It’s almost like animal instinct.  You feel your body naturally go into this mode where it becomes more alert of the sounds and movements around it, like millions of years of evolution and conditioning have given us an instinct: be weary of meadows.  Anyways, without further ado, here are some of my shots from the meadow:

Paradise Meadow

Where I sat, ate my lunch, and thought about life.

The meadow!

I was tempted to jump into this creek because the water was so clear, but it was only about 60 degrees outside and the water felt slightly above freezing.

My daypack, Blueberry, and my snowshoes, Thor and Ragnarok.

After I was done kick’n it in the meadow, I gathered my stuff and hiked out.  Hiking out was significantly easier than hiking in, as I already knew where the trail was located during the non-snowcovered portion of the hike, and I was able to just follow my snowshoes for the snow-covered portion of the hike.  As I emerged from the snow covered wilderness and back onto the road, some old guy was standing near my vehicle with a professional grade camera trying to snap photos of Mt. Lassen.  When he saw me with my gear, Sony a6000 hanging off my neck, and snowshoes strapped to my feet, he exclaimed, “Wow!  You are way better prepared for this day than I am.”  “Damn straight, old man.  Prepared is my middle name,” I thought to myself.  Instead, I just said something nondescript and we chatted a little while about the tracks left on the side of Lassen by backcountry skiers and boarders.  He was actually a pretty cool old-dude.  I’m glad I bumped into him.  After we finished chatting, I snapped a few more photos of the Tiguan, aka Sexy Beast, and the snow covered wonderland.  From there, I headed down the mountain and made my way home.

She’s kind of getting dirty.

So sexy.

Blueberry, Thor, and Ragnarok just chillax’n.

Pretty much had the place to myself.

My new signature apparently.

This didn’t even look real.  It was too pristine.

Another shot of this gorgeous hillside.

A few panoramas showing the road snaking its way through the snow.

Oh, you probably thought that was the end of the blog?  Nope!  As I started down the mountain and got back into satellite range, a text popped up on my phone.  Apparently it’s my sister’s prom night, and my family wanted to borrow the Sony a6000 for a few pre-prom photos.  I zoomed my way down the mountain, and barely made it in time to snap a few photos.

Well…she looks cute at least.  :-p

Cheers,

-Rob

PS – None of these photos are edited or cropped in any way.  Mostly because I was too lazy to do it tonight.  I probably could have really made the pictures pop with a bit of editing, but…I think it looks pretty good as is, yeah?  🙂