Cold Boiling Lake Trail

Dogs No Dogs

Features Lake · Spring

Cold Boiling Lake, is a small lake with cold gases (carbon dioxide) gently bubbling to its surface in places. The gases come out of seeps on the lake's bottom. Cooling magma releases the gases, and they find their way up and out in volcanic areas, such as Lassen Volcanic National Park, where there are cracks and other openings in the earth's surface.

There is also a spring with bubbling gases near the lake, in the meadow on the south side of the lake.

To find Cold Boiling Lake Trail, take the main highway, CA 89, about 11 miles through the park from the south (Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center), to a small paved, but unmarked, side road that leads to a picnic area, parking, and restrooms. The Cold Boiling Lake Trail trailhead is at the end of this side road, on the south side of the road.

Cold Boiling Lake Trail is basically a wide, flat trail. Starting out in a thinly forested area, the trail passes through fir forested areas, and areas with fewer, wider spaced firs. There is very little undergrowth.

At the 0.5-mile mark, in the thin fir forest, Cold Boiling Lake Trail passes Twin Meadows Trail to the left (south). Cold Boiling Lake Trail then continues through forest for a short ways, to emerge at a meadow and Cold Boiling Lake. Here, Cold Boiling Lake Trail passes Bumpass Hell Trail and Crumbaugh Lake Trail, as it makes its way to the lake's shoreline and ends.

Tall firs with an undergrowth of grass primarily. Grassy, marshy meadow at the end of the trail.