Backpacking Vulcan Lake

Nestled at the foot of a peak high in the mountains of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in Southern Oregon’s coast range, lies a turquoise blue jewel of a lake, and one of the finest backpacking destinations I’ve had the pleasure of visiting. I discovered Vulcan Lake a few years ago while on a dayhike excursion from Quail Prairie Lookout Tower and decided it was definitely a place I needed to come back to. Last Summer I rounded up a good friend and his daughter who had never been backpacking before, and we headed off for adventure. It was a bit of a haul down the coast highway to Brookings from the Willamette Valley, but with a picnic lunch stop to break up the trip, we made it up the Chetco River and into the mountains to our trailhead before too late in the afternoon.

The trail is a 3.7 mile loop, with moderately steep switchbacks going up the ridge and dropping a short distance down into the lake basin. It’s about a 650 foot elevation gain in all, and on a hot day, it’s nice that it’s so short. This makes for a bit of hard work for young backpackers, but once they crest the top of the ridge and it’s all downhill to the lake in plain view from there, the climb is forgotten.

There were a lot of interesting things to see on this trail, including small lizards zipping about across our path, shiny green serpentine boulders, and intriguing plant life. We saw plenty of these delicate lilies and the rare Kalmiopsis leacheana for which the wilderness is named wafted fragrant scents on the breeze as we passed by.

This area is also home to a species of carniverous pitcher plant that grows in large clusters around wet and swampy areas. Beyond Vulcan lake, you can hike down to Little Vulcan Lake, which is completely surrounded by large, healthy specimens of these insect eaters. They are so completely different looking from the other plants we’re used to seeing, it’s really worth a day excursion just to go visit them.

Now, this is a shining example of a room with a view. Our campsite on the flat, sprawling rocks looked right out at Vulcan Peak across the lake.

My young friend, Logan, treated me to a backcountry salon experience by braiding and styling my hair with a hand whittled hairstick to hold it in place. I sure felt fancy. It’s good to be stylish when out in the woods. 

The campsite we chose had a monumental fire pit built up by folks over the years, complete with a little warming oven off to one side. We tried to bake a dessert with red huckleberries, which turned out tasty, but rather sporadically cooked. I learned that backcountry baking is a skill I will need to work on fine tuning.

Mid-July was a perfect time for the trip. Days were warm, the lake was comfortably swimmable (and home to many fun newts near the shore), and the nights were clear and perfect for star-gazing. There has been discussion recently of returning next August during the Perseid meteor shower, which would be quite a show. The entire time we were there, we only ran into one other group, but mostly the whole lake basin was ours. We discovered quite a few trails branching off from the lake, heading down to the smaller lake below and up to the top of Vulcan Peak, making it a nice base camp for kid-friendly day hikes. One could easily spend a week here and not run out of places to explore.

I always love seeing young explorers get out there and climb up mountains. It’s good to get a sense early on in life of the places you can go with persistence and your own two feet carrying you there, and becoming a backpacker opens up such a wide world of places to go. I would say Vulcan Lake is a good place to start.

You can find a good trail description and driving directions in William Sullivan’s book,

100 Hikes of the Oregon Coast and Coast Range.

The Forest Service has a neat online brochure about the lake at:

http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5319941.pdf