7-10-01 Bumpass Hell

 

7-10-01 Tu 9:03 PM

After I had broken camp and packed the car, I typed fifteen minutes. I took the road south to the Lassen Peak Trailhead. I deliberated and thought I just didn’t have the time. I retreated to the car and continued down the road, past Emerald Lake to the Bumpass Hell Trailhead. I took the way along a rim of rock below Brokeoff Mountain, which had once been part of a super-mountain called Tehama, before the top few thousand feet of the peak got “broke off.” The trail made its way through beds of silver lupine, pussy toes and manzanita. I met with a number of crickets. My pace was brisk as the trail went gently uphill, and the footing was solid so my heart did not pound in my chest as it had on my ascent of Cinder Cone. After a few miles, the trail offered a vantage point from a cliff down into a barren bowl of a multi-hued little valley, tinged with rust, yellow, and alkali white, in which ponds of green water boiled and bubbled, and pools of blue steamed. The trail dropped steeply into the place. Signs were posted warning of the danger in straying from the trail. Von Bumpass himself had lost a leg to this place when his step broke through the crust into a boiling mud pot. A little creek hissed through the bowl and the stench of sulfur reeked in the air. Wooden boardwalks had been constructed for closer views. Clouds of  steam poured from one strange vent that might have had an opening the size of a three-car garage, judging from the volume of vapor bursting forth, except the vent itself could not be seen; it called to mind an entrance to Dante’s Inferno or something from one of Brueghel’s nightmares.

I took photographs and video—had the place to myself for a while before I hiked out. I drove from there out of the park through Chester, past lake Almanor, passing logging trucks, down into Susanville. I considered stopping here and there to fish, but I also considered moving onto Reno or further. I drank wine from the bottle with the wood-handled knife. “We live in a beautiful world…” sang Cold Play. Barns, horses, field of hay. As I grew closer to Reno, I became ever more agitated.