Lassen Volcanic National Park, Pt. 5

Does it ever end? Sorry for all the posts, but I'm going through my photos very slowly.


We finally made it to the top of the Cinder Cone. A cinder cone is essentially a volcanic vent that has accumulated debris (cinder) around itself from its eruptions. So the cone is not much more than a pile of chunks of volcanic rock (which is why, as stated in my last post, it was difficult to climb). Although this picture does not provide sufficient perspective to convey the size of this thing, if you open the image up and look closely, you can see two people on the left rear where the two paths meet.


Ok, here's a closer look at them. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how big it was.


You can get a better idea of how deep it was from the opposite side. Eric was excited because it reminded him of the desert pit monster in Star Wars. I agreed.


You could get a nice view of Lassen Peak from here. It is considered an active volcano, albeit dormant, volcano. I was trying to smile here, but it looks more like a painful grimace.


Turning the camera to the left, you got a fucking sweet view. You can really see the incredible variety of terrain. Forests, desert, volcanic rock, lakes, hills, dunes, mountains...



Looking to the right of the above picture are the aptly named Painted Dunes. Absolutely moving, it was one of the more unique sights in Lassen. You can see the trail off to the right which we hiked on. You can see where I took this picture from the last post, it's not too hard to figure out.

Probably just two more posts of Lassen left...