Lassen Volcanic National Park: A One-Day Itinerary
Lassen Volcanic National Park in California is home to four types of volcanoes. It is the only U.S. National Park site where you can see all four types of volcanoes.
Lassen Volcanic National Park is in mountainous Northern California. That means that there are months during the year when the park is inaccessible to vehicle traffic. The primary 30-mile road through the park will close for many months throughout the year, as the region can get 30 feet or more of snow.
Our family took a road trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park in late May. About 20-miles of the primary road was closed for snow removal. While we were disappointed that much of the park was inaccessible during our visit, we still found plenty to see and do.
Here is one-day guide to visiting and making the most of a trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park in late spring when the road is closed to traffic.
About Lassen Volcanic National Park
Lassen Volcanic National Park is located in the rugged mountains of Northern California. It is about 1 hour east of Redding and 90 minutes west of Susanville. Lassen is the most southern volcano stretching down the Pacific Northwest. Its sister volcanoes include Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, and Mt. Shasta.
Lassen is an active volcano, with the last eruptions occurred from 1914-1917. At the park today, you still can see and smell the effects of this active volcano. You can see boiling mud pits and fumaroles and smell sulfuric gasses.
Getting to Lassen Volcanic National Park
We drove from Reno, Nevada to Lassen Volcanic National Park in late May. There was still plenty of snow on many of the mountain peaks.
Unfortunately, about 20 miles of the 30-mile main road through the park was closed for snow removal. For our trip, that meant that we only had two miles of drivable road at the south entrance of the park.
Knowing before we visited that much of the park was inaccessible, I planned routes to see the most we could in the short time we had available.
This meant that we drove to the south entrance of the park, stopping at the Kohn Yah-mah-nee visitors center. Rangers on site helped me plan our itinerary.
Acclimating at the Kohn Yah-mah-nee Visitors Center
After paying the $30 entrance fee (valid for seven days), we stopped at the Kohn Yah-mah-nee Visitors Center. Kohn Yah-mah-nee is the name indigenous peoples called Mount Lassen.
The visitors center is always our favorite stop at any national park site. First, we can stamp our National Parks Passports. Our son collects stickers of each park we visit, so we purchased his Lassen sticker. Second, we can grab maps. And third, we can talk to Park Rangers to get the lay of the land. At Lassen, the Rangers helpfully told us which park sites we could visit, opening and closing times, and other valuable information.
Sulphur Works
A short one-mile drive up the main road brought us to Sulphur Works. Also, this was the furthest drivable point at the south side of the park for us.
We watched the intriguing boiling mud pits, heated by hydrothermal vent, providing the last vestiges of power from a dormant volcano.
We also smelled the pungent, brutal sulfuric scents of the region. Our noses were overwhelmed by the odor. We felt sorry for a dog walking on the trails with another visiting family. If our noses struggled with the odor, we knew the dog’s stronger sense of smell must be put to the test.
Click the post below to see the bubbling mud pit. We removed the sulfuric scent for your comfort!!
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A Detour to the North Entrance
We spent a short time at the south entrance. Then, we traveled out of the park toward Red Bluff and took small (and often gravel) country roads to get to the park’s north entrance. This detour took just under two hours to drive. Not ideal. But, we could see more of the park this way.
Our visit was split into two half days. On day one, we toured as much of the main road as we could (about 12 miles of road). After our circuitous detour, we spent time at the north entrance around Manzanita Lake.
After this half day venture, we drove to Redding for the night. The next day, returning to Reno, we drove on the north side of the park and stopped at Butte Lake, located at the park’s northeastern corner.
Ideally, we would want to visit in summer or early autumn when the primary road is fully accessible. Our schedule prevented this. We were, however, able to see some fantastic part of the park site.
Manzanita Lake Area
The Manzanita Lake area is a short drive from the North Entrance station. It was a good place to stop for lunch and restrooms.
Manzanita Lake has a number of hiking trails. You also find an information center, a museum, and more. Manzanita Lake was bustling with lots of people in the lake on boats and canoes.
Here’s where our visit turned a corner. After the long detour around the park, my family was spent and done. I thought some lunch might revive us. It did not. Meaning that while I wanted to spend a lot more time around Manzanita Lake, I deferred to the rest of the family.
Devastated Area
We decided instead to load up in the car and drive as far along the main road as we could. That led us on about 10-miles of road before reaching Devastated Area. The road beyond was closed to us.
At Devastated Area, you can take a short half mile circular hike. Placards along the path tell the story of this area, impacted by the 1915 eruptions. We saw what the site looked like before and after the eruptions. The landscape drastically changed as volcanic boulders transformed the impact zone.
However, nature has a way of changing too. So, more than one hundred years after the volcano’s last activity, we saw a landscape once again transformed with forest growth.
Unfortunately, much of this forest growth was burned during the devastating Dixie Fire in 2021. The fire charred more than 900,000 acres of land, including many acres within Lassen Volcanic National Park. We saw the remnants of the fire frequently on our visit.
Butte Lake: A dusty, bumpy side trip
The following day, after spending the night in Redding, we drove back to Reno. Our journey took us on the road north of the park, and allowed for a detour to Butte Lake, on the park’s northeast perimeter.
I knew Butte Lake was at the end of six-mile grated dirt road. Arriving at the beginning of the summer season, the road was in some disrepair, making for a very bumpy and mostly dusty drive.
Since Butte Lake and the Cinder Cone trail are not part of the main park road, there is no entrance station. There are places for you to pay the park entrance fee, although it is pretty much an honor system. Our seven-day entrance covered our time.
Butte Lake offered beautiful scenery of the placid lake and surrounding forest.
To the west of the lake, you can take the trail to the Cinder Cone Volcano. It’s a three-mile hike with lots of exposure to the elements.
Our Shaka Guide
As with many other national park visits, we used the Shaka Guide app for narration while we drove through the park.
We do love the information provided by Shaka Guide. We leaned about the history of the 1914-17 eruptions, the indigenous people groups, how Lassen got its name, and a famed photographer who fortuitously left just before the devastating 1915 eruption. We’ll leave some of these stories for Shaka Guide to tell you on your trip.
Here is a link you can use for the entire canon of Shaka Guide locations, including Lassen Volcanic National Park. We receive a small percentage of your purchase at no additional cost to you.
Unfortunately, the Lassen Volcanic Park guide is primarily focused on narration on the main park road. And since that road was mostly closed to us, we lost out on much of the information the guide has.
An Add-on: Whiskeytown National Recreation Area
I discovered Whiskeytown National Recreation Area while doing research for this road trip. The site was a short 10-minute drive from our hotel in Redding. That meant we had to take a trip.
Originally, I had planned to spend a little time at Whiskeytown the day after our Lassen visit. However, with the road mostly closed in Lassen, we pivoted and drove to Whiskeytown on Day 1.
We did not spend more than one hour on site. Our first stop – the visitor’s center for the ever important passport stamp.
We then drove around some of Whiskeytown Lake. I was looking for the Kennedy Memorial but overshot the stop.
On our return, we did find the Kennedy Memorial. President John. F. Kennedy spoke at the dedication of the Whiskeytown Dam on September 28, 1963. Tragically, the President was assassinated less than two months later in Dallas, Texas.
The Kennedy Memorial Plaque remembers the legacy of the President. It is located on the site where Kennedy spoke during the dam dedication ceremony.
There is plenty more to see and do at Whiskeytown, including hiking, camping, boating, and waterfall viewing.
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