Wednesday morning we awoke in Reno, NV to get Sean on his flight home. Dropping him off around 8, Andrew and I were on our own. We caught a delicious breakfast at a little cafe before hitting up the Sierra Trading Post for some much needed gear. Taking care of the usual off-day tasks- laundry, food shopping, phone calls home- we headed back to the park to make camp at Manzanita Lake. The campground at Manzanita boasts the largest capacity in the park, located just past the main entrance. Offering hot showers (for a quarter a minute), fully featured bathrooms, swimming and fishing at the lake, and short easy hikes, it's no wonder this campground stays far busier than our more primitive Butte Lake location. The north end of Manzanita Lake offers a spectacular view of Mt. Lassen, pictured above.
Thursday was rather routine, taking a few repeat photos and sampling a few plots near the park road just past Chaos Jumbles. Friday began on a high note. We were working on the mid to upper slope of Table Mountain, north of Lassen and Chaos Crags, and started out with a repeat photo. We managed to find the exact location beyond any doubt, no easy feat, and always a great satisfaction. Unfortunately, the day took a drastic downturn as we headed to the first plot for the day, crossing into a shrubfield which we would be fighting our way through the rest of the day. The shrubfield was a mix of Manzanita, Ceanothus, and Chinquapin. Each of the shrubs offered much resistance to walking through, especially when going uphill. The heights of the vegetation varied from 140 to 160 cm, about chest to shoulder height. Needless to say, we were restricted to an average pace around 1 km/hr or less, and the incessant scratching, poking, and wacking of legs and arms became maddening after just a short time.
Upon reaching the first plot, we struggled to measure the slope (measuring slope requires one person to walk 20 m downhill and then back up, a feat which took about 15 minutes in the thick shrubs), and then set up the plot and were prepared to start measuring trees. Pulling out our hypsometer, I tried to measure the first tree, but the battery was exhausted. CR2 batteries are uncommon, and while we had two other sizes of CR battery, neither was correct. So, the day was made even more difficult as we then had to measure all tree heights with the clinometer. This means that rather than simply shooting the bottom and top of the tree with the digital device, I had to be exactly 15 m from the tree and estimate the difference in elevation from where I stood to the bottom of the tree. Fortunately, the plots were located relatively close together, so though we moved slowly between them, we were able to finish five plots by the end of the day. The other benefit of trudging through the shrubs were the great views of Chaos Jumbles. Pictured below, Chaos Jumbles was formed about 650 years ago when a gigantic slab of rock fell from Chaos Crags, demolishing everything in its path the whole way through the valley and up the other side a bit.
Finally arriving home around 5:30, we were happily surprised to have completed five plots and a photo while stuck in the shrubery. Andrew and I both came out of the day happy to have conquered the terrain, sustaining only minor scrapes all over our arms and bruises along our shins. While we did trump the terrain after all, it remains a location I hope never to visit again.The next few days were quite productive, as we sampled many plots in and around Chaos Jumbles. Evan Lawley arrived Friday night with his friends Chris and Jack, and he joined us Saturday for another extremely productive day, finishing five plots in the Jumbles and doing a photo as well, despite being restricted to using the clinometer for heights again. After the second day without the hypsometer, Andrew drove to Redding and back to purchase the extremely rare yet necessary CR2 batteries.
Saturday night we were hit with a surprisingly powerful rainstorm. Beginning around 8 pm, the rain only got stronger through the night, leading to an early night for everyone in the campground. Pouring so hard I had to dig a drainage trench for my tent, the rain filled all of our pots and pans with well over an inch of water, which we were able to use to do the dishes the following morning. We got a late start because of the rain, but still managed to get 4 plots done on Sunday. Hiking around the lower part of Table Mountain, we were low enough to see some trees we had yet to see. Douglas Fir and Incense Cedar shared the area with Ponderosa Pine, White Fir, and some Sugar Pine. We stumbled upon a Douglas Fir on our way to the third plot which was so incredibly massive we had to stop and measure its diameter; the tree came out to 195.0 cm in diameter: that's 6 ft 5 in wide for all those not used to the Metric system.
For a change of pace, and a fun Friday adventure (our Friday comes on Tuesdays), we decided to do the Loomis Mountain repeat photography on Tuesday. Driving out of camp a bit before 9 in the morning, it took us until about 10:30 to find our way to the base of the mountain. We hiked up the mountain rather quickly, reaching the summit well before noon. The hike was exceptional, offering views of Mt. Shasta the whole way up. We passed by some really cool Mountain Hemlock and walked over a lot of Alpine Tundra. The only way to get closer to Mt. Lassen than Loomis is to be on Mt. Lassen. I managed to use the "panoramic assist" function of my camera along with photoshop to generate this near-360 degree view of the summit.
Needless to say, it was an incredible place. Just before leaving the very top to hike to the repeat photo locations, I accidentally kicked a small waterproof box. Retreiving it from under a rock, I opened it to find a notebook and pencil with some previous hikers signatures. Andrew and I happily read their entries and added our own. Finding the photo locations was easy, and we snapped the photos and headed back down the mountain to the van. Driving farther along the crazy, unnamed dirt forest roads, we managed to find our way to the next location to do a remote plot near the Park/Forest boundary. The plot location was incredible. We were forced to cross two streams to find it, stumbling upon a meadow with a pond in the valley of three incredible cliffs, one of which we had just been on top of, we paused to watch two Golden Eagles soar along the cliffs before continuing up the side of a ridiculously steep mountain where our plot was located. The area was breathtaking yet buggy, and while the views were incredible, the heat, humidity, and innumerable insect attacks detracted from the experience, if only trivially.
We ended the day with a fantastic concoction of noodles in a peanut-butter & hot sauce medley with crisp celery and onion pieces fried into the sauce. As a perfect finish to the day, I chose to go for a short night ride on my road bike, out to the Crags to view the stars in their pristine, unpolluted condition. The remoteness of the park, paired with a new moon, gave incredible clarity to the starts, and the milky way painted the sky like a thin viel of ambient vapors.
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