Inventory Trip #2

Northern California, 12/14-12/18/09

My second trip for work in the DYNW Great Inventory Count was through Northern California with co-worker Amanda. We'd be heading to some of my favorite places in North Cali and meeting some great people who work with us.

Our first day was spent on the "big loop" around Lassen National Park taking counts of our sites in Lassen National Forest. I love Lassen NP, has all the cool stuff of Yellowstone and none of the crowds. The gateway communities for the park sometimes forget it's there. While that's a shame for the splendid beauty of the park, it's a boon for people like me who enjoy a bit of solitude on the trail. It took us 13 hours to drive the circumference of Lassen hitting Falls River Mill, Susanville and Lake Almanor. By the time we left Lake Almanor it had been snowing for about an hour. As we reached the pass just south of the Park, we were getting warnings that chains were mandatory. As we were driving a rental, chains were not evident. We decided to try our luck anyway. The worst DOT could do was turn us around, making our day even longer. But we got through, just very slowly.

Our next couple of days would be spent driving to the various locations in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and Shasta Dam. No more snow storms to drive through, we decided to try our luck with a couple of snowbound tourist destinations - McCloud River Falls and Castle Lake. I would have loved to have gotten closer to Mt Shasta, however the snow would have turned us back before we got to the tree line for an unobstructed view. We decided to be satisfied with the magnificent view from Castle Lake.

From there we drove out to the McCloud River and a series of waterfalls. Always a sucker for waterfalls, I drove along the beat up snow covered rutted road into the falls. and promptly got the car stuck. With much maneuvering and throwing out of ideas, Amanda & I got the car unstuck, grabbed a couple of pictures of the falls, then quickly got ourselves out of the mess we had gotten into.

I never get to spend enough time out in these other areas of our territory and feel I am missing some quality adventures.