Lassen Volcanic National Park, Pt. 2

Eric hiking on the trail. This was about two miles out of the Summit Lake campsite. It was your basic alpine terrain, totally dominated by sparse conifers and scrub. Although the days started off cool, it warmed up quickly. The lack of shade made it a bit hot, but thankfully there was virtually no humidity (as expected) and so it was usually comfortable enough. This type of terrain constituted about 50% of our hike.


There really wasn't all that much wildlife. However, the first couple miles of our hike had literally hordes of these guys. They look like chipmunks, but after looking at some of my photos I realized that they were the ubiquitous golden-mantled ground squirrel. Anyway, they were scampering all over the place, but strangely enough, they slowly disappeared as we moved through the park. I really don't remember seeing any others after the first day.


After four or five miles, we ran into our first lake, Echo Lake. It was relatively small and not all that interesting or significant (except for the fact that it was the first lake we hiked by), but the cool breeze sweeping in over the lake was appreciated.


Since it was towards the end of the summer and the area was experiencing a drought, many bodies of water were smaller than usual, or even entirely dry. This appeared to be a shallow area of Upper Twin Lake that had dried up and was cut off from the remainder of the lake. I went out to take a look since I was curious about the little tufts of grass...


After walking around the dried up lakebed, I saw what I thought to be crickets jumping around my feet. I looked down only to see tiny frogs frantically jumping out of the path of my clumsy feet. There were dozens of them within arm's length. I think they are Pacific Tree Frogs, which I've seen in Oregon - but my knowledge on amphibians is somewhat lacking so I can't be sure.


These guys were tiny. Those are dried up pine needles towards the front of the picture.

More to come...