Lassen

Lassen, California
4/13/2013

Laure, Quarup, Peter
Two splitboarders and one skier

Lassen GPS tracks.

As snow in Tahoe receded pretty early this year, we turned to Lassen for a weekend of snow camping. We used an awesome online guide of trails and maps to plan our trip and recommend this website to others planning a ski touring trip in the Cascades.

At the time, roads were completely closed to vehicles beyond both entrances, so we decided to park our car at the southwest entrance's visitor center and tour from there starting at 11am.

The beginning section was plowed but not open for vehicles, so we had to hike it with the gear on our backs. Peter was soon sorry that he had heavy and bulky REI rentals for the backpack, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad.

Laure and Peter hiking the plowed part of the route still closed to vehicles.

You hear that, Elaine? ;-)

We planned to take a shortcut through the snow named "Sulphur Works Cutoff", which is a more direct route than the road's "U" shape. Unfortunately, we ended up leaving the road too early and got stuck unable to cross one of the sulphur streams. We had to backtrack to the road and decided to play it safe by following the long way instead of trying to take the shortcut. For details, see our GPS tracks above or check out this map to find where the shortcut is.

Peter (with his ridiculous hat), Laure, and Q.

We thought we were taking the Sulphur Works Cutoff.

Agh, you're hurting me!

On our way to Helen Lake, we came across some skiers that gave up on their summit attempt because they heard some whumphing. Later on, Laure also heard some whumphing, which was definitely bad news. Fortunately, we were in a avalanche safe area, but this certainly brewed some concerns about going further the next day.

Helen Lake sits at 8.5k ft above sea level, which was 1.5k ft above our starting point. We reached it at 3:30pm and set up camp shortly before Peter passed out inside. We rented a 4-person 3-season tent from REI, which worked out well.

Our camp near Helen Lake

Lassen Peak

Sunset from Helen Lake

Perhaps the best part of our trip was the amazing backcountry gourmet food that Laure prepared. Among many things, she made couscous with vegetables, mushrooms, and almonds. For breakfast the next day, she made pancakes! The downside is that we carried about 12 pounds of food plus a lot of cooking utensils. But it tasted much better than freeze dried stuff.

Couscous with veggies and mushrooms.

Is that Popeye eating our couscous?

Our plan was to try to summit on the second day. Alas, winds were pretty high (20+ mph) and the first day's whumphing forced us to abandon that idea. Instead, Peter and Q did a short tour of 450 vertical ft before we broke camp and headed back. On our way back, we were able to find the Sulphur Works Cutoff trail that we missed on the way up. We skied and snowboarded down, which turned out to be the best descent of our weekend (see GPS tracks above).

Overall, this was an adventurous trip even though we took it easy on the second day. This was Peter's and Laure's first experience snow camping, so that was a success in itself.

As an added bonus, we were fortunate to catch Chico's showing of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, which was something we had been wanting to do it for a long time. It pumped us up to get into more hardcore adventures.