Ice Cave, "The Factory", Nature Beauty, and Goodbyes

 July 17 - 25

Thursdays are the day that Emily, the lone ranger for the 54,822 acres of the Monument, is available to come up to the caldera, the busier Lava Lands and the Lava River Cave tieing her up the other days. There is also the ridiculous rule that (local) volunteers can not be up here unless the ranger is - although we are up here every day and are living here without adult supervision. All that to say that Thursdays are busy with activities - and the only day that is, since we also did not hire the 12 seasonal employees for the summer. 

The 17th was a tough day for Emily, and she arrived in tears; her boss had told her to dismiss another volunteer couple based on the complaint of a single visitor and without investigation or speaking to the couple about their side. Activity was the balm she needed, so while I went off with Stephne to measure the lake levels, temps and gas levels of the hot springs, she and Matthew led the guided hike on the Big Obsidian Flow. After the hike she took him off-trail to an obsidian ice cave.

Cool layers

We ended the day with a nice paddle on East Lake to the pumice beach, which we shared with the mergansers. 

Sunday, Matthew and I hiked alongside an old obsidian flow to see a spot colloquially called "the factory".  This area has been occupied for at least 11,000 years, and there are large quantities of chipped stone waste  alongside this obsidian flow, evidence of "work stations" where the obsidian would be rough-knapped into managable pieces that could be carried out and refined later as the need arose.

Obsidian chip waste from ancient people's knapping

Blooming moss

The pumice field behind the obsidian flow - the birds were so numerous and beautiful sounding here - mountain chickadees, red crossbills, yellow rumped wabblers, red-breasted nuthatch, white-breasted nuthatch, evening grosbeak, and clark's nutcrackers.

The top of the flow

Climbed to the top of other side for a view of the central pumice cone and East Lake

Love this piece of obsidian

All too soon it was time to say goodbye to our co-workers, Britton and Stephne Barnes, who were returning to Southern California to start the new school year.  They will be greatly missed!

Lava Cast Forest, Pumice Fields, and Smoke

July 5 - 16, 2025

Once over the Fourth of July funk, we drove to another section of the Newberry National Volcanic  Monument, the Lava Cast Forest. It is more accurately a lava mold forest. The lava that flowed through the northwest rift of Newberry Volcano 6000 years ago flowed through a forest and solidified around the trees. As the trees burned out they left behind molds of themselves.

Paintbrush

Pumice

Ponderosa Pine Bark

Pinedrops

Trees in harsh environments twist to ensre water gets to all of it

Twin tree molds

Cast of a tree on its side

Newberry volcano caldera in the background with the northwest rift flow

Never tire of viewing these mountains

Textures

Back at work we staffed the visitor center and roved the trails, answering questions, giving trail guidance and picking up trash

Paulina Lake and the Peak

Paulina Lake abuts an older obsidian flow

Britton and Stephne were away for a few days and I had the privilege of checking in on their cat Lester - although I'm not sure who was checking on who - I felt I was being watched while in our camper

The Painbrh are blloming on Paulina Peak

We were invited to tag along on University of Oregon's volcanologist  Danielle McKay's field study class for the day.

Love how the lava folded onto itself

East Lake osprey

After the class Matthew and I kayaked east lake past the slide on the side of the central pumice cone

Part of the northwes riff

Took a ride up the dirt road that is our evacuation route should there be a fire up here. This pumice field outside of the monument was our destination, since we could legally collect pumice here.

A volcanic bomb - shot out of an eruption

More kayaking - the snow is almost totally gone from the caldera

Unfortunately, the large Cram fire north of us produced a lot of smoke our way. We drove up to the peak to see what we could - it wasn't much.

the lower photo is what we should be seeing in the one above it

Matthew in his element, testing to see which rocks float with a young visitor

Testing the gas emissions from one of the hot springs on East Lake

37th wedding anniversary celebration - East Lake Resort's incredible mixed berry cobbler - we ate two