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Brokeoff Mountain Trail, Lassen Volcanic National Park
July 5th, 2003
7 miles round trip
~2500 vertical feet
~5 hours 40 minutes
Rating: 9/10
Surprises: about 50% - 70% of the trail was covered by deep
snow, making the trail longer to hike and harder to trace, but less impact of
the knees descending.
We drove from Hat Creek campground outside
to the north Manzanita Entrance of Lassen National Park to the south entrance,
and got ready for the hike at about 9:50am. There were a couple other cars at
the trail head parking lot. The trail quickly led us into the beautiful creek,
forests, green plants, and snow patches. In fact it was a total surprise that
so much snow was un-melted in July at < 6000 foot elevation. Comparing with my
experience to Mt. Tallac one month earlier and the night at Northstar resort, it
assured my feel that Lassen was cooler than Tahoe.
  
The trail was a little hard to trace as it
was covered by snow most of the time. Fortunately previous hikers left
foot-prints to follow, though occasionally there were multiple choices to solve
and some branches led to failed attempts. Chao was not experienced walking on
snow despite of her blue-level skiing skill, possibly due to the lack of snow in
her hometown in Jiangsu, China. Yet the trail was relatively easy overall, and
we made the top by 12:50pm. The 360-degree summit experience was spectacular,
esp. with the view of the inspiring Mountain Shasta and smoggy Redding, one of
the most polluted cities in US in summer (according to another hiker from
there). We enjoyed the cool wind, warm sunshine and lunch before starting to
head down at about 1:20pm.
        
Hiking down could be either very fast or
very slow, depending on your ability to tackle snow. The group from Redding
quickly got used to it and disappeared into the forest soon, yet another couple
of hikers in their 50s with trekking poles walked carefully and slowly. I tried
to show and convince Chao leaping down was fast and easy, but without much
success. We couldn’t slide down either as what we did coming down Mt. Tallac,
because the freezing snow would be too long for our butts to tolerate.
Fortunately eventually I figured out one way to average our speeds by pressing
the snow hard with small steps in front for her to follow as a stairway.
Steadily we came down without many rests and reached the trail-head by 3:30pm.
Chao liked the trail a lot too.
    
We stopped at Sulphur Works for a while and
wanted to hike the Bumpass Hell trail. But the trail was not yet open due to
deep snow. So instead we stopped at the interactive loop trail at devastated
area in front of Lassen Peak, and learned some details about the 1915
eruption. We then headed back to Hat Creek for shower, dinner, campfire and
playing cards in tent. BTW driving by I saw a kid, one of many anglers at Hat
Creek, got a 6+ pound fish. Apparently it was a good spot and good season for
fishing.
  
We didn’t follow our plan to climb Lassen
Peak on July 6th, the day after. According to my understanding
Lassen Peak trail was less appealing than Brokeoff. Chao’s toes were not yet
totally recovered from the Half Dome torture and were worsened by Brokeoff
trail, besides we needed to be home early for grocery shopping, cat bathes, and
house cleaning. So after breakfast and folding up tent we headed back to Davis
at 9:30am. Highway 44 was a very neat and pleasant drive …
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