Lassen Peak and the start of the trail from the parking lot. Kyoko, Kyle and I started our hike at 9:30am after leaving the Bay Area at 5am.
Closer up. The trail gains a little under 2000 feet in 2.5 miles, but doesn't seem steep until the very end.
Looking back toward the parking lot early on the trail. As you can see much of the trail was still in snow. It was marked with wands and easy to follow in any case. Never too steep to be dangerous even with normal shoes. Kyoko and Kyle each used one of my hiking poles, and I used my ice ax.
Kyle heading up the trail. You can see a melted out section beyond him.
View from the trail.
A melted out section showing the summer trail with water running down it. Kyle strikes a pose.
Continuing onward, with the summit visible in the distance.
Kyle and Kyoko making their way up.
Scenery. I'm not sure what this is--maybe Loomis Peak?
A zoom in on the summit.
Less zoom.
Kyle resting. Most of the trail was melted out higher up.
After 1.7 miles and almost 2 hours, Kyle gives up. He had a headache and felt like vomiting, sure symptoms of altitude sickness (he made it to a little over 9800 feet). He and Kyoko started to head down while I continued to the summit. As the weather was deteriorating this seemed like doubly a good idea.
Nearing the summit. There was no real trail, at least that I could figure out, to get the last way up to the summit, and it was quite loose and unpleasant at the end.
Another view from the previous area.
On the summit (10,457 feet). There were a few people there and I got one to take a picture of me. It was good I didn't try to get Kyle to continue to the summit as it took me 22 minutes to complete the last 0.8 miles, and Kyle would have easily taken over an hour. Also, just after he stopped, there was a rather delicate traverse of a steep snowfield.
According to the guy who took my picture, three skiers or snowboarders from Utah had climbed the very steep snowfield on the "devastated area" side of the mountain, taking 4 hours to get up, and then skied down. I caught them with zoom about at the bottom.
Scenery at the top. Unfortunately Shasta was covered by clouds (maybe this direction?) and couldn't be seen.
I hurried down, running as fast as I could, since the weather continued to deteriorate and I could feel drops of rain at times. I'd forgotten to leave Kyoko's and Kyle's raincoats with them and wanted to make it back to them before they got wet. Here is my first glimpse of them.
Zooming in.
Reunited. This is a great picture--which way is right?
Heading down with threatening skies in the background. Surprisingly there were still people going up when we reached the parking lot. It rained a bit after we started driving, but never too hard and we didn't notice any lightning or thunder. It seemed to clear up after that.
Kyle fell many times. Good for practice! He was in very good spirits on the way down, and of course his altitude sickness cleared up immediately.
More scenery.
Kyle just before the parking lot, with Kyoko further behind.
One last look at the trail and peak. You can see people heading up. The trail was 5 miles round trip, and we finished at 12:55pm (3:25 total time) with only me summiting.
