Lassen: View of Lakes

Lakes in the far distance, looking southeast.

From just southeast of the summit near Lassen Peak on Highway 89, a great view of two California lakes comes into view. The stitched-together photo is stitched shows an apparently disconnected highway in the foreground; what you are really seeing is a couple of very sharp switchbacks going downhill past the outcrops of volcanic rocks in the closer foreground.

Location of above photo: the hairpin turns SSE of the summit south of Lassen Peak, on Highway 89.  From TNM 2.0 Viewer, courtesy USGS.

The lakes are Mountain Meadows Reservoir AKA Walker Lake (MSRMaps location), near Westwood, CA, and Lake Almanor (MSRMaps location), near Chester, CA.

Two lakes, with Lassen Volcanic National Monument in the upper left. From TNM 2.0 Viewer, courtesy USGS.

Both are part of the electrified chain of lakes and reservoirs along the Feather River and its tributaries, which goes all the way downstream to Lake Oroville and Oroville Dam.

A somewhat enlarged view of the two lakes.

Mountain Meadows Reservoir is in the distance on the left; Lake Almanor, a large lake, fills the slightly closer distance from the middle into the right of the photo. Note the trees on the far right.

Possible fire scars from the Chips fire.

In this last photo, we've gone all the way to the right (west) of Lake Almanor; the trees on the far right in the previous photo are now left of center. Above the patch of trees right of center, a steep hillside and part of a table mesa have brownish slopes that may have been denuded by the Chips fire in the late summer of this year.