Lava Cake Expedition

M’laiksini Yaina is a beautiful mountain near the border of California and Oregon with the classical cone shape of a stratovolcano, meaning that it has been built up by successive eruptions over many years. Driving around the area it pops into view occasionally as you turn corners or pass a lake and anybody who has driven the I5 corridor through Medford has seen it in the distance. This volcano also happens to be fairly isolated, so it’s lucky that Allison and I have a friend from Cornell who lives just twenty miles away who lent me her house for the weekend.

Mt Shasta stands alone at the north end of California, a formidable mountain without anything comparable nearby. By prominence and isolation Shasta is second only to Mt Rainier in the continental US rising over 10,000’ above its plateau and with the next mountain of similar height being in the Sierras three hundred miles to the south. Even more remarkable is that Shastina, the older volcanic peak connected to the main mountain, is over 12,000’ tall making it comparable in size to Lassen!

What stands out most about Mt Whitney is the abrupt sheerness of the east facing cliffs. The whole eastern flank of the Sierras is like a wall, a byproduct of the way the uplift zone is tilting the Sierras up and out of the Owens Rivery Valley. The granite and relatively young age of the mountains also makes for impressively steep valley walls and canyons. Our car was parked at the high gate of the Whitney Portal road, about two miles short of the official trailhead.

Badwater Basin and Mt Whitney are pretty far apart, even in a straight line by flight. To get from the Panamint Valley at the western edge of Death Valley over to the Sierra Nevadas you don’t have much choice: you have to cross over the fairly intimidating Inyo Mountain Range and then make your way through the often windy Owens River Valley to the base of the sharp eastern cliffs of the Sierras.

We staggered the really difficult days of the low to high trip around two active rest days on days 2 and 4. The plan for day 2 was to mostly bike downhill into the Panamint valley for 10 miles (west of Death Valley) and then ride rolling terrain to the Panamint Springs Resort, a small campground and restaurant on the western edge of the park. With just 30 miles of riding total we expected to have plenty of time to rest and enjoy the views of the mountains surrounding us.

Day 1 of our trip was by far the most intimidating. About +11,300’ of elevation gain over the first 21 miles to get from Badwater Basin up to Telescope peak and then another 4,000’ of descent over 8 miles of trail that wind around Bennett and Roger peaks to get back to our cached bikes and camping gear at the Charcoal Kilns. Neither Alan or I had ever done a day as big as this – our estimate was that it would take 18 hours to complete and so to make it to the summit by 7pm we planned to start at 4am.

Whitney Portal To kick off the trip we needed a full day of gear caching and driving, just to set everything up for later on. The first step was to put a car at the Whitney Portal, which is the trailhead leading to the Mt Whitney mountaineer’s route which we planned to ascend five days later. In Winter the portal road is gated about 2 miles below the trailhead. So we drove up in the morning and parked Jacob (the twilight blue Outback) at the gate and threw in our winter camping and mountaineering gear.

This isn’t a volcano trip, but I snuck it in as a little side trip along the way to skiing all the Cascades! It’s a bit of a geographical quirk that Mt Whitney, the high point in the continental United States, and Badwater Basin, the low point in the continental US, are only separated by about 100 miles. Death Valley and Badwater Basin in particular are formed by mountain ranges that are being pulled apart by tectonic forces, causing the valley floor to slip lower and lower below sea level.

Kohm Yah-mah-nee is the high point of the remarkably active Lassen dome volcano, which has peaks that are over a half million years old as well as peaks, like Lassen itself that are barely 30,000 years old. Getting to the summit of Kohm Yah-mah-nee is about +4600’ of gain up to the peak at 10,450’, over a brief 4.5 miles. Step one to getting to Lassen was the six hour drive from Oregon down, and along the way I was treated to a big surprise… gas is unbelievably expensive right now!

Three Fingered Jack is part of a very old volcanic complex that has been eroded over hundreds of thousands of year. This process left behind a dramatic summit of spires made out of totally crumbly volcanoic rock. Because it’s in Oregon it’s also very very cold. Getting to the summit col involves about +2200’ of elevation gain over 4 miles, if you don’t get too lost. So this is the start of the real trip, step one is to drive down to California so that I can then drive back to Seattle!