7-5-01 9:   PM Th Carson City, NV via Virginia City

Where was I? Fourth of July I woke up at South Summit Lake in Lassen National Park. About eight or nine, as I remember. I must've read and wrote. I ate cereal that I got from the Days Inn in Chico. Drank coffee that I'd poured into my thermos at the general store the night before. Brushed my teeth. Crapped in a fly-filled outhouse while I read National Geographic. What else? Saddled up and rode about forty iles out the park, east on 44, to 89, I think, to a gravel road turnoff leading to Butte Lake. I videotaped my dust-cloud rooster tail in the side mirror. The lake looked promising. No one was there. I parked near a trailhead for Noble's Emigrant Trail. I got my poles and tackle and some beer and stuff and hiked down to the lake. It was flanked by lava beds to the west, shattered granite on the east. Several snakes slithered through the green water where the fry congregated. I hooked a boober up to my fly and cast it out to sit while I worked a rooster-tail spinner on another line. The fry chased after the spinner but nothing else. I worked several hundred yards of lakeshore: Nothing. Deer prints. Stinking mud. Nothing else. After a couple hours, I headed up the trail toward Cinder Cone and Snag Lake. I brought my poles and gear and cameras. Jumbled acres of lava rock lined one side of the trail, forest, the other. After a few miles, you come to a field of ash. Crumbled black rocks, barren but for a few hearty pines. A cone of these hard, cold cinders rises out of the field seven hundred feet into the air, and mineral-painted dunes disappear around the cone. A trail winds up the cone. It doesn't look far to the top, but it's clearly steep. I debated awhile before stowing my rods and stuff other than cameras and water behind a dead log. Your feet slide in the scoria a half a step with every step you take. It's literally, two steps forward, one step back, if you do the math. After twenty minutes, I regretted my decision but resolved to make it to the rim. More later, elsewhere.