Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Thatsa Lotta Lava - Lava Beds National Monument, Tulelake, California [September 25-26, 2023]


 


Not all volcanoes are tall, pointy, conical mountains.  Shield volcanoes are generally flat, with gentle sloping sides.  There are lots of shield volcanoes in the world, Mauna Loa and Kilauea in Hawaii are two well-known and very active ones.  Medicine Lake volcano in Northeast California is the largest volcano, by area, in the Cascade Range, but you may not have heard of it before.

 

Acres and acres of lava

The Medicine Lake volcano has been active for 500,000 years.  While composite (pointy mountain) volcanoes have explosive eruptions, shield volcanoes leak lava through surface vents.  Some of the resulting lava flows and empty lava tubes are preserved in Lava Beds National Monument.

 


Lava Beds National Monument is in the middle of nowhere.  The nearest town, Tulelake, is a tiny crossroads that sits on the shores of Tule Lake.  Parts of Tule Lake itself have been drained and reclaimed as agricultural land. 

 


Because of the ways the roads run around there, most people enter the park through the Northwest or Northeast entrances.  The Visitor Center is in the Southern part of the park.  We were surprised as we drove past acres and acres of hardened lava.  Signs at overlooks explain what you are seeing.  Most of the lava erupted 30,000 – 40,000 years ago.  There is a flow in the Monument from as recent as 1,200 years ago.  Because of recent eruptions, and the potential of more, Medicine Lake is considered a dormant volcano.

 

Lava builds up inside the tube with each new batch of lava

Molten lava flows to the surface through lava tubes.  As lava erupts through a vent, the lava along the outside edges of the flow hardens first, creating a tube.  Subsequent flows add layers to the inside of the tube, much like the layers of an onion.  Sometimes, a chunk of a layer will pull off with the force of the flow leaving an uneven indentation on the surface of the tube.  After the last of the lava has left the tube, liquid lava might harden as it drips from the ceiling creating lavacicles.  (Does that sound to you like geologists might have a sense of humor?)


Lavacicles

 

Many of the lava tubes are now open as caves to explore.  You get instructions on how to decontaminate any gear or apparel that have previously been in a cave to stop the spread of White Nose Syndrome in bats.

 

Descending into Mushpost Cave


This is what the inside of a lava tube looks like

We went in the Mushpot Cave.  It has lighting inside it, and signs explaining the features that you are seeing.  The other caves are not as civilized, but you can borrow flashlights from the Visitor Center. 

 

Schonchin Butte is a cinder cone

The flat desert is dotted with rounded hills known as cinder cones.  Highly pressurized molten lava explodes upward, cools mid-air, then falls back to the earth as rocks, which eventually cover the vent.  Then fluid lava leaks along the base of the pile, moving the rocks and forming a rounded cone.  Folks in the area call them buttes.  The Schonchin Butte is quite prominent in the park.

 

Captain Jack's Stronghold

This area was the land of the Modoc native people for 10,000 years.  As white settlers claimed ancestral Modoc land, conflicts arose.  The Modoc reluctantly signed a treaty and were relocated to the Klamath Reservation to the North in Oregon.  Conditions there were terrible, so a group of Modoc under the leadership of Kientpoos (known as Captain Jack by the white settlers) returned to their ancestral lands, wanting a reservation there.  

Captain Jack's Stronghold


They fled to a lava stronghold where warriors, women and children set up a makeshift community and held off US Army forces.  Eventually, the army cut off their access to water in the lake and, half-starved, the Modoc were forced to surrender.  Kientpoos was executed.  The war was so costly to the US Army, that they almost eradicated all of the Modoc people afterwards.

A nice welcome
 
Our morning neighbors


We camped that night in the campground inside the Monument.  There was a brief, gentle misty rain, and we were greeted by a rainbow.  The next morning we saw a herd of mule deer grazing at the empty campsite across the street from ours.


There are three kinds of lava

A'a 


Pahoehoe 

Obsidian




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