Hiking · Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, USA · recorded with NomadTracks

Cinder Cone, Lassen Volcanic NP: a 6 km climb up a perfect volcano

The Cinder Cone in Lassen's quiet northeast corner is geometry made landscape: a 230-meter cone of loose black gravel, a double crater rim, and the orange-and-grey Painted Dunes spreading below. Six kilometers round trip — but the cone's two-steps-up-one-back surface earns every meter of the 263 m gain.

Distance6.0 km
Elevation gain263 m
ActivityHiking
Duration3 h 05 min

About this data: this track and its photos were personally shared with us as samples by a NomadTracks user. NomadTracks never uploads, collects or shares your tracks or photos — your recordings stay on your devices and in your own cloud.

Route map of Cinder Cone, Lassen Volcanic NP: a 6 km climb up a perfect volcano drawn from the recorded GPS points on an OpenStreetMap basemap
The actual recorded GPS track — start marked green, finish orange. Numbered pins mark where the photos below were taken.

Download GPX Coordinates, elevation and relative times — recording dates are normalized out, photos not included.

Elevation profile of the track
Elevation profile over the full distance. Switch the map above to interactive mode, then slide across the chart — a marker follows the route.

The slope that eats your pace

The pace chart of this recording is comedy: brisk forest kilometers, then a near-standstill crawl up the cone's flank. Loose cinder gravel halves your speed and the chart proves it — bring it up next time someone calls 6 km 'a short walk'.

This is the track from our screenshots

If the name sounds familiar: the Cinder Cone hike is the very track shown in NomadTracks's App Store screenshots — photos pinned to the line, elevation chart and all. Here is the real recording behind them.

About the place: Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, USA

The Cinder Cone sits in the quiet northeastern corner of Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, reached from the Butte Lake campground off Highway 44. The cone, its double crater rim and the surrounding Painted Dunes and Fantastic Lava Beds all date to an eruption around 1666; the park road and trailhead are typically snow-free from June to October.

Butte Lake beside the black cinder field in Lassen Volcanic National Park
1 · Butte Lake beside the black cinder field in Lassen Volcanic National Park
Lone pine on the smooth gravel slope of the Cinder Cone
2 · Lone pine on the smooth gravel slope of the Cinder Cone
The Cinder Cone silhouetted against dusk light with a solitary pine
3 · The Cinder Cone silhouetted against dusk light with a solitary pine
Dawn light over the volcanic landscape and Painted Dunes near Cinder Cone
4 · Dawn light over the volcanic landscape and Painted Dunes near Cinder Cone
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