Cinder Cone

The approach winds through cinders and Jeffrey pine shade. About 1.2 miles in, a fork reaches the cone’s base and opens the first view of the Painted Dunes to the south. The last 200 feet to the summit are steep, loose cinders that feel like coarse sand underfoot. Take short steps on the climb and descent; hiking poles can help with traction.

From the rim, a separate path continues down into the crater. The summit panorama also takes in the Painted Dunes and Fantastic Lava Beds, with Lassen Peak, Prospect Peak, and Snag Lake farther out. For a photo, keep the crater in the foreground and the colored slopes or distant peaks beyond it; that shows how the bowl sits in the larger volcanic landscape.

Cinder Cone is made of scoria: gas-filled blobs of lava were thrown into the air, cooled, and fell as porous rock. The cone rises about 700 feet above the surrounding ground. Its crater has two rims, likely the result of changing eruptive activity late in the cone’s formation. Remnants of an older cone can still be seen on the south side.

The eruption happened in the mid-1600s. The exact year is unsettled: one geologic account dates it to about 1650, while tree-ring evidence points to 1666. The resulting lava flows toppled forest, dammed a creek to create Snag Lake, and partly filled the larger basin that became Butte Lake. Water from Snag Lake now seeps beneath that natural dam toward Butte Lake.

The red and orange slopes formed where ash landed on still-hot lava and oxidized. That colorful flow was among the earliest of five that built the Fantastic Lava Beds, so the dunes and black lava around them are parts of the same eruptive sequence.

The hike follows part of the Nobles Emigrant Trail, one of two emigrant routes across what is now the park. That older crossing runs through the same landscape the volcano later reshaped.