A Hell that isn’t hellish to hike
The boy had plunked himself down in the middle of the trail, making it hard for me to get by.
“I’m not going any farther,” he whined. “It’s too hard. I’m going to die.”
His mother wasn’t having any of it. “You’re not going to die. Now get up and start walking. This is good for you.”
I felt a bit like the boy. It was hot, the trail was full of rocks and other hazards, and it seemed as if I should have rounded a corner to my destination long before now.
But I stopped for a minute, breathed in that clean, high-mountain air and admired the view, which stretched to the Sierra Nevada, nearly 100 miles away. It was heavenly. I was hiking along a three-mile trail in Lassen Volcanic National Park named Bumpass Hell, named for guide Kendall Bumpass, who discovered the area in 1864. The trail ends at a series of boiling mud pots and hot springs; Bumpass fell through the crust of one such spring, eventually losing his leg from the burns he suffered. Hell, indeed.
But the trail itself offers divine views.
From my cliff top perch, I could hear a creek tumbling over stones hundreds of feet below. A hummingbird buzzed by; a few minutes later a hawk soared across my horizon, flying out of sight.
Mt. Lassen, at 10,463 feet, loomed over the scene, small patches of snow still clinging to its high slopes. The trail ran along the edge of a bowl ringed by volcanic crags and cones, the remnants of Brokeoff Mountain, a volcano that began to crumble 10,000 years ago, eventually collapsing into itself to form the huge caldera in which I stood.
“It’s such an awesome place,” said another hiker, who was leading a band of family members along the trail. The Rothfeld clan, 15 of them from Cape Cod, Mass., were getting acquainted with Lassen.
“Huge and beautiful and quiet,” he said. “An amazing combination.”