1 Our Journey
2 Mt Shasta
3 1st note stop of the trip. Learning about the andesite ash and lava that make Shasta.
4 The snow was still VERY deep at Burney Flat (6950').
5 I found it interesting that small pocekts of dark soil caused interesting melting around this portion of the snowpack.
6 Mt Lassen as seen from Shasta. Lassen is the world's largest plug dome volcano but was once a HUGE stratovolcano called Mt Tehama. You can somewhat project the size of Tehama by following the angles of the snowy mountains between the two trees in the foreground up to a single mounded point. Tehama was most likely a caldera center much like Crater Lake.
7 Yup, still a lot of snow at Burney Flat.
8 A view of the the hummocks that eminate out of the northern flank of Shasta and reach out into the valley some 28 miles. The odd hills have some layering in tact, but no one could quite figure out how they formed... until Mt St Helens erupted in 1980. It turns out that the hummocks are the remains of an ancient and giant summit of Shasta that catastrophically collapsed in a volcanic landslide 330,000 years ago.
9 Hotlum (L) and Shastina (R) are several of the volcanic peaks that make the "composite" volcanic complex known as Mt Shasta. Hotlum has formed over the past 9000 years and Shastina is a tad older at 9800 yrs.
10 Camp # 1 at Lava Beds National Monument. Time to put those camping skills to the test!
11 Everyone got their tents up in time for dinner and a nice sunset.
12 After dinner it was time to explore some lava tubes! However, a wrong turn on the road sent most of this crew away from the tubes and on a nice hike along the park roads. (L-R) Jeff, Monty, Julia, Jordan, Cameron, John, David & Horace.
0615_Shasta_LavaBeds