Lake Paulina Shore Loop

The mountain just east of La Pine state park is the largest volcano in the United States.  It is called the Newbury Caldera and is the mother of many local natural wonders. Down here in the valley, just down river at Sunriver, the most recent lava outflow from Newbury caused a massive above-ground lava field. You can see this field pretty distinctly on Google earth. It flowed out of a butte that is now the location of a national park visitor center for lava lands. This flow of lava is a mile across and 40 feet thick above the other terrain and it change the flow of the Deschutes river and created a wonderful set of falls and rapids. Across the highway (up lava, if you will) is a hole in the ground where you can rent a flashlight from the rangers and go exploring a 2 mile long 60 foot wide lava tube. A cool place to take an inquisitive youngster. (or me).

Today, we are headed up to the top of the caldera. Up there are a few things to see. One is Big Obsidian. This is a the largest outflow of obsidian (a black glass like rock) on the planet. This flow is something like a mile across and dominates the south side of the Caldera. There are also two round volcano caldera lakes (much like Crater Lake just south of here). Most of the land up here is part of the Newbury Volcanic National Monument and we are going to do the 7 ½ mile Paulina Lake Loop Hike. 

We are hiking on a Friday and we made a medium early start, but that wasn’t good enough to get a parking spot at the first trail head we came to. We drove on into the Caldera and found a spot at the next trail head near Little Crater Campground. The sun is out. The sky is blue. We are at around 6800 feet.  We have lunch packed and plenty of water and off we go.

We are hiking counter clockwise around the lake. One cool thing about hiking around a lake is that you get to see where you are going and where you have been. Hike up a cliff over the water, get a great view of where the hot springs are. Hike for another hour and look out and get a great view of the cliffs you were on. Like that.

We first hiked through Little Crater campground. What a great place to stay! I want to come and stay here. It is a thin and long campground with a road going up the center. There are campgrounds (primitive sites with parking room for a trailer) on either side of the road and then the far boundaries of the campground are the lake and the caldera wall, which on this side of the caldera is heavily loaded with obsidian.

The trail through the campground is the access road. At the end of the road is a little loop and a little amphitheater ring and a trail sign that tells about the local hot springs.  The sign tells you that in about a mile will be a marked side trail that leads to some hot springs. These hot springs are evidently a famous little local feature. When we talked to other campers or hikers in the last 30 minutes they would inevitably ask us if we were “going to the hot springs?”. We had read that the lake water level is usually too high this time of year the holes that were the ‘tubs’ in which people would sit would be to far underwater, but one guy on a big eBike told us that he had been out there just yesterday and they were perfect. I guess we shall see.

View from Little Crater Park

Where the Trail starts again

The caldera wall crowds against the lake at this point (probably why the campground road stops here) and the trail now winds right up against the, sometimes sheer, edge of the lake. It is a lot of short up and down hiking with many stones and roots in the trail. This makes it a little slow and tough going. My partner commented later that at this point she was thinking that if this was the how the rest of the 7 miles was going to be, we were going to have a hard slog. 

There is one spot where the trail jogs up and toward the caldera wall for a bit and goes through a very obvious obsidian flow. 

Ah Obsidian. This is the jet black glass like rock that you may associate with being made into the finest pre-historic arrow heads or spear tips. It is very shinny and, like glass, can be napped into a razor edge. Since it is something that everyone (especially little boys) would want to pick up for a souvenir, it is illegal to gather. There is a big fine and even bigger signs up near the obsidian areas warning you of the danger. I am just imagining the rangers searching the pockets of every 8 year old boy that exits the park. Ha!

Of course, the really nice samples are bigger than bowling balls and are sitting right in the middle of the path. They are all nice and shiny because everyone pats them or tries to break off a sliver or even pick them up. The actual huge flow, off to our left and going up a hundred feet, is covered in dust and dirt and not quite so shiny. The trail through that area is covered in thousands of obsidian slivers. Probably just from people walking through there. Now what could the harm be of picking up a sliver? I mean, aside from the $500 fine and possible court costs. I think the sign should say something like “Stop by the visitor center and get a free sample piece of genuine park obsidian for anyone under 18!! “

Bowling Ball Obsidian in the middle of the trail. So Shiny!

Just past this area the trail goes back down by the lake. In fact, it goes down too close to the lake. The Lake must be really high right now because parts of this area of trail are slightly underwater. We had to be a little creative about trail following to keep our feet dry.  I don’t like leaving the trail because it really does rapidly erode the area and isn’t a good thing for the future of the trail. So we did it sparingly and carefully. 

And then we ran into a family that was happily running along the riparian region that the sign told us to stay out of, smashing down the reeds and singing out things like “Look, Dad, A snake !!” “Dad, we are going to China!”, “Dad, where are the hot springs?”

Hot Springs from Cliff

The hot springs were another quarter mile down the trail and then up a little hill and then down the same hill on a spur to the lake shore. There were a lot of people at the terminus of this spur. Some had come by boat, some had walked. All were enjoying the “hot springs”.  Our guide book had told us that when the lake was high, you really couldn’t get to the hot springs as they were underwater. I think that is the real situation we had today. The people there were sitting in little tubs that had been created by digging a trough in the sand/gravel that was at the lake beach. The hot water was coming up out of the gravel. I don’t know, but I imagine that when the lake is lower, there may be more natural structures that are capturing the hot water. I was certainly not tempted to enter at this particular time.  Besides, we have this hike.

Upon leaving the hot spring area, the trail goes up hill pretty dramatically. We had to climb perhaps 1000 feet to get over and around the cliff headland that delineates the north edge of the hot spring area. (The rock cliffs to the north and the obsidian flow to the south probably create the situation that funnels the volcanic heated water into the small beach area of the hot spring). 

There is a glorious view of the lake from up on the cliffs. The Big Obsidian flow (the largest Obsidian flow known in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE) is easy to see over there across the lake (hey, just below that is where we parked the car).

My partner had thought that about now we would be getting tired and hungry and very hot and we would probably want to go for a swim. Luckily it wasn’t all that hot and a swim was not necessary. This was good because the water is very hard to get to. Even when we came down off of the cliff and were next to the shore again, the shore was a little (2 foot) cliff of sharp rocks and went into water that was very scummy. Lots of algae and debris on the surface. I am guessing the wind is blowing it over to this side of the lake, because the other side didn’t (wont) look like that.

Big Obsidian Lava Flow

We are now about half the way around on our hike. Lots of fishermen in little boats off fishing 30 or so yards off the shore. The trail itself is a soft packed ground winding through pine trees. Very pleasant and easy going. We are getting around to be close to the  Pauline lake (historic) lodge. This is where you can rent and launch boats so we are beginning to run into more casual hikers (that is, people who aren’t  going to hike all the way around the lake). It is still pretty sparsely populated. Just before we get to the lodge, the trail has a fork with the trail sign pointing up the hill. This takes us up and around the lodge area. If we had taken the low trail, I think it would have taken us through the lodge grounds, which would have been nice because we would have run into a pretty green lawn by the water where we could have stopped for lunch.

Teenagers just before being sucked into the overflow

Just past the lodge is the outflow for lake Paulina in the form of Paulina Creek. There is a little water level control dam there that has gates for regulating the flow of water into the creek canyon. We did not see it, but just a little ways down that canyon is where the water flows off the edge of the caldera creating Paulina Falls. I wonder who this Paulina person was.

You ever think about names and how just naming something, after yourself or your lover can reverberate and spread across the landscape? In Portland we have a lot of things named Powell. Powell Street, Powell Butte, Powell’s Book Store. And since there is a Powell street, there are businesses named after the street: Powell Street Barber Shop, Powell Street Café, Powell Street All Nude All The Time. Etc. Just makes you stop and wonder.

Anyway, we are now hiking on the West side of the lake. We have lost our views of the snowy mountains and the Big Obsidian, but we can see the cliffs across the lake where we stood to get such great views. On this side of the lake is the main boat launch and day use area and camping grounds. This side tends to be lower and more grassy, which explains why the camp and lodge and such were built over here. Because it was easy to do so. These areas are also close to the pass through the caldera that the original roads were built through.

Because this is a low lying area, there are many places where the high water level of the lake is coming up onto the trail, but it is mainly making things muddy. Just a half mile on, however, the caldera wall comes back over and crowds the shore again. Now we have a steep and heavily forested hill to our right, To our left is a boulder sprinkled shore line which drops into very deep water in many places. We came along one place where water was up over the trail and there were sort of stepping stones you could try to walk across, but slipping off the stones would put you into water over your head. We elected to hike up and around the blocking headland on a new trail other cautious souls had blazed. 

No Undergrowth?

There is 10 feet of water right at the edge of the rock

At this point my partner commented on how the woods on the hill to our right were so barren of understory vegetation. Nothing green growing on the ground at all. I think it was because the hill was rising high and fast to the south and so blocking out all sunlight for pretty much the entire day. 

One last little thing of interest before we get back to our car. Sort of hidden up here (behind an unmarked, locked, private gate) is a set of homes. Perhaps 10 very nice houses on acre size pieces of land, many of them with direct lake access. Sitting in the middle of a federal reserve, they must have all been purchased and built a hundred years ago (well, rebuilt recently). I wonder how that works. 

We are now back to our car. Just in time too, as my new bionic knee was starting to send out “Check Engine” signals. 7.5 miles. Lots of scenery. I think this is one of the most beautiful hikes I have done in a while with many unusual sights to enjoy and consider. 

But for now, we are going to the lodge to see if they have Ice Cream. 

Hike The Loop. Get A Scoop!