Ridge Lakes ↔ Lassen Volcanic National Park ↔ Autumn Hiking Series

Our Sunrise Hiking series continues with a (you guessed it!) sunrise hike to Ridge Lakes in Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Lassen has its share of fall colors and even though I'd rather see wildflowers in bloom, the scenery in autumn is pretty in its own way...

We started hiking as soon as the sun started coming up over the mountains and we had the entire trail to ourselves the whole day. Yep, you heard right! We didn't see another soul on this trail even though we reached the trailhead at around noon.

I keep mentioning how surprised I am at the diversity of these Lassen trails. I expected this trail to wind through the forest and that's it, but we found ourselves walking through meadows and there were plenty of openings through the trees to see the surrounding mountains.

Although the second half of the trail was fairly steep, okay, really steep, it wasn't nearly as far as I thought and it was totally worth the extra work to get there.

When we arrived at the lake, the reflections on the water were so mirror-like that the sight of it played tricks on your mind!

If you didn't know it was water, you'd think there was a giant hole in the ground with a forest growing upside down inside of it!

You can see the lines on the mountain where rocks have fallen down the side...

I'm still happy with my new insulated backpack and can't believe how comfortable the padded straps are. From here on out, you probably won't be seeing many photos where I'm not wearing it!

Puffy white clouds started rolling in and the hike back was just as pretty as the hike to the lakes...

There has been lichen growing on the trees on every trail we've been on in the park, and on this trail the lichen was growing horizontally on the trees!

Nature is crazy beautiful and sometimes unexpected, isn't it?

It's so exciting to be able to handle the more strenuous hikes and I can't believe how far I've come in such a short time! Maybe hiking Lassen Peak isn't such a longshot after all.

To score our Ridge Lakes hike on our complicated rating system, we're getting a little help from one of our favorite comedies The Great Outdoors.

I enjoyed the panoramic views of this hike and look forward to hiking it again in the early summer when everything is in bloom. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be (yay, I'm getting stronger with each hike!) and I would have hiked even further to get there. I give it 5 Chet Ripley pontoon boats out of 5. 😉😉😉😉😉

Hubby agrees and gives it 5 arrogant Roman Craig's out of 5. 👌👌👌👌👌

↓

You might also like:



↔

Let's go on an adventure!