Crater lake

Lassen National Park

In northern California, there is a place called Lassen National Park. No, I hadn't heard of it really until a few days ago. There were some volcanoes, things blew up and now they have boiling stuff in the ground that smells a bit.

 Actually, Lassen NP has all 4 types of volcanoes. Pretty rare. Plug Dome, Cinder Cone, Shield and Composite. I won't go into all of the scientific details now (mostly because the book is somewhere in a suitcase) but the photo below is of Lassen Peak, a plug dome which erupted 100 years ago. Its peak is about 10457 feet above sea level and is 2000 feet above the car park at the bottom.

We found a camp site and set up all of our stuff. We decided to have pizza for dinner.

We worked out a way to make our saucepan and frypan set into an oven. Basic system. Put pizza in, close and shove lots of hot stuff around it and on it.

Below is the result. Pretty happy with it and more importantly, Shannon was. Olivia doesn't like pizza but has never tried it. Apparently kids don't eat pizza.

We came across our a smelly pile of bubbling mud called the Sulphur Works.

There was also a mildly bubbling lake called Cold Boiling Lake. It wasn't really anything to right home about. Although apparently it was.

Olivia wanted to play in the snow, so we went to Lassen Peak car park. I headed off up Lassen peak while they did snowy stuff. The snow wasn't exactly glowing white but it was better than most road side snow we had seen.

2000 feet up while at decent altitude seemed like a good idea for training. 3 - 5 hour round trip.

 The only slightly sketchy bit was a section where if you slip off to the right, you would slide down about 100m down a 45 deg slope until you hit another 45 deg slope of rocks.

The view from up the top was pretty good and the air was thin enough for some good training. 58 minutes up and about 29 back.

This was the hardest junior ranger thing and they normally only have it for 7s and up but a few tears and some memorising sessions later and she had her badge which in this case, was actually a patch.

Yosemite National Park

We got to Yosemite National Park late in the afternoon. All of us had been here before. Me for climbing several times, and Shannon and Olivia spent a couple of days here last year. We were booked to stay for just 2 nights at Curry Village, the place that is well known for the Hanta virus that killed a few visitors back in 2012. Should be ok, we just won't cuddle the mice.

I can't remember what Yosemite is famous for. Oh, that's right. Big rocks.
When we got through the Wawona tunnel, we got a very well know view. Still half asleep, Olivia didn't want to get out of the car for the photo that there are about a million of each year.
From left to right:

• Olivia Rose Hunter attempting a smile while very grumpy.
• El Capitan, a 1km high chunk of granite that myself, Alex and Hamish spent 32 hours with last year.
• Half dome barely visible in the background, higher than El Cap but only 600m tall.

After buying myself my first new rope in several years, we had to test it out. I climbed up and hooked up a top rope.

 Granite takes a little bit of getting used to. It can be very slippery but requires a lot more footwork than the indoor climbing that Olivia had done before. After a while she started to work out some moves.

 Stemming and smearing started to come naturally after a few test runs.

 Onto the next climb and I started teaching her some foot techniques for cracks. She decided that instead of using her hands in the cracks, she should use some of my cams. Unknown to her, this has already been invented and is called French Free Climbing. She placed 3 different sized cams and even managed to place a nut.

Now that I think about it, it is probably a great way for beginner crack climbers to learn foot work. She did a few hand moves and even threw in a notorious fist jam.

After climbing, we got back on the free shuttle and headed out to El Capitan Meadows where we went for a walk to the base of "The Nose", the most frequent and famous route on the cliff. We spotted a cool looking lizard and heard a wood pecker but didn't see it.

The day was a scorcher and we headed down to the creak with is normally freezing. It was but Olivia wanted to go in anyway. Nice easy steps, being careful not to fall.

Woops.

At the end of the day, Shannon and Olivia went to see the Ranger Dan show for her Junior ranger program.

The next morning, we got up really early and left Curry Village to head up into Tuolumne (pronounced Twarlamy) Meadows, the amazing area of the national park just north of the valley. On our way to take a quick walk to the lower Yosemite falls - part of a 2400 foot waterfall cascade, I was just about to say that we should look for deer when These popped up.

 It looks small in the photo but it is actually 100m tall.
Yosemite Falls

 There is always room for a budding Yosemite Junior Ranger to pick up trash, as that is actually one of the possible tasks to choose.

 Once up near Tuolumne Meadows, we could look back down towards the end of Yosemite Valley. Back towards the right is the massive Half Dome. Left of that is (I think) Mt Watkins.

This is Tenaya lake. One of the best looking places in the solar system.

At the Tuolumne visitors centre, Olivia completed another junior ranger test.

The best bit about Yosemite is that it is awesome in every way. The worst bit is that it caters very well for all tourists. This was a line of maybe 30 vehicles waiting to get into the park. It was one of the busiest weekends in a long time. When we had arrived, it was a Saturday afternoon and although there was no wait for us, we did drive past a traffic jam trying to get into Yosemite Village. Luckily, we were turning right to Curry.

Outside of the park now and heading north towards Lassen National park. This is Mono Lake

For an hour or so, we left California and entered Nevada.