Wrong Turn Sends Couple on a Brush with Death

Couple Finds Mountain Lion Habitat During Breakdown on Remote Wilderness Road

Last Summer, my husband, Brian, and I had just finished tent camping with relatives in the northern section of Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California. After my cousins departed back to their home two hours away, we decided to explore the southern part of the national park, which was approximately 70 miles away via the park road that ran north and south through the national park. This north-south road was the only access between the north and south halves of the national park. Driving around the national park (outside park boundary) from the north to the south was a minimum of 130 miles, nearly twice the distance.

After driving for only a couple of miles south on the national park road, we were stopped by a wall of snow nearly 20 feet high (in July), an impossible feat for a 4-wheel drive vehicle, not to mention our front-wheel-drive rental car. Large bulldozers were working to clear the snow-blocked road, but it appeared to be a Herculean task which could take days or weeks.

Thus, we were forced to turn around and drive the 130 miles around the national park's circumference outside the national park boundary. After driving for an hour or so, we came upon a tiny "town" at a crossroad. The entire town seemed to consist of one little dilapidated house, an old-fashioned general store and a gas station whose attendant pumped gas, checked oil, and washed windows for the customer in front of us. When we pulled up and asked for directions, the attendant, wearing a shredded straw hat and chewing on what appeared to be a long piece of hay, exposed his toothless smile as he kindly waved us over to the grocery store next door for better driving assistance.