This did not provide the scenery we expected
Mount Shasta
Due to the many forest fires and road
closures we didn’t
manage to visit one Californian National Park last year and this
we wanted to
rectify: the reason we were heading south via California.
We planned to walk up Lassen Peak first thing
as this walk
was the only serious one we had planned. Our first job was to
assess the amount
of snow and ice on the trail, as 2.5 miles up and then 2.5 miles
down a
mountain is not easy if the trail is very icy.
What a lovely walk, although slippery in places you could always
manage to step
in deeper snow with less slip. The top was freezing cold, but
magnificent views
all round. 3 lovely Americans hid behind a rock with Caroline so
that Murray
could take a 360 panoramic photograph.
On the way down at about 9000ft hundreds and hundreds of
tortoiseshell
butterflies appeared; technically a dispersal, not a migration
as they don’t
follow a fixed route. The ravens gather round as the butterflies
are an easy
(but small) nutritious snack. Every so often the butterflies
land in the snow
for a drink of water. The large numbers mean you can hear the
sound of
butterfly wings.
Bumpass Hell trail was our next stop and led to a mini
Yellowstone hydrothermal
area. So, all in all a lovely park, but crowded.
A bit of a walk uphill, people in for scale
