Brown Mountain Lava Flow 10-4-24

Photos by Debi and Elisabeth

Ashland Hiking Home

To open the October 2025 month, we headed off to the Snow Park off of Highway 140 between Fish Lake and Lake of the Woods. On #37, we encountered our “wild life” for the day: A herd of Black Angus meandering down the middle of the road. Beautiful shiny black coats, but rather placid, uninterested attention to our cars trying to reach our destination. Inching through them, they slowly separated to let us inch along. Cute young ones, to be sure.

We hiked the Brown Mountain Lava Flow on the PCT. It was a glorious day, with bright blue sky and moderately warm temperatures. Eleven of us took the short spur trail to the PCT from the summit parking area off of Highway 140 and down the PCT across two dilapidated bridges over very dry creeks to reach and cross Highway 140. Once on the other side, the PCT continued past the intersection with the trail access between Lake of the Woods and Fish Lake, continuing on into the lava fields. As always, those new to this hike marvel at the sight of massive flows of lava from eons past. We traversed many sections interspersed with patches of wooded areas untouched by the lava flows. This trail provides an interspersed experience in the open lava fields and closed, cozy woods. 

We were so enamored of the area, we hiked a bit further than intended, found a relatively open area off the trail for a lingering lunch and conversation (a trademark of our group), capped with chocolate covered almonds. We retraced our route back to the cars realizing by our GPS and “health app” readings that we had hiked a full 6 miles round trip with about 600’ elevation gain. This was a lot for our group, especially traversing most of the time over very rocky terrain and “rolling stones” as Gabriele described, wisely advising that we include in future descriptions the advice to wear especially sturdy hiking boots.

We had a wonderful time together, and look forward to having Kay back next week after her extended overseas travel on a birding trip in Ecuador.

Elisabeth