Forks in Our Road: Paulina Lake Loop and Paulina Falls

Friday, June 24, 2022

Paulina Lake Loop and Paulina Falls

We've been waiting for weeks for the snow to melt to visit Paulina Peak in the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, a few miles south of Bend. Even with our warm weather of the last few weeks, the National Forest Service still has the road gated up to the peak, though it looks like you can walk via trails with minimal snow. The roads should be open soon.

Rather than tackle the peak on this trip, we decided to walk around Paulina Lake, the westernmost of two large caldera lakes in Newberry Volcano, an active shield volcano that is the largest in the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a chain of volcanos running from British Columbia down into California. To put things in perspective, the volcano is the size of Rhode Island. The loop around the lake is about 7 miles and we added a little bit more in walking down the outflow creek from the lake to Paulina Falls.

Even though the lake is close to the house, it is about 2600 feet higher at 6500 feet and the drive was uphill all the way. On the drive out, we saw a Mule Deer (in town, Black Tails are abundant), several ground squirrels and chipmunks, and a chubby Yellow-bellied Marmot.

We parked in the lot opposite the Visitors Center and had our first look at the large 1500-acre lake with beautifully clear water. From the number of boats on and headed out onto the water, we gathered that the fishing is good. In fact, it turns out that the lake is one of the best fishing spots in Oregon for trout, both stocked Rainbows and wild Browns, and salmon, the landlocked Sockeye salmon called Kokanee.

From the mostly empty lot (it would be overflowing on our return), we started our clockwise tour of the lake, quickly taking the short trail down to Paulina Falls and back before continuing on the Lakeshore Loop. Almost immediately we walked through the busy Paulina Lake Lodge and by its attendant marina before heading into the woods which were at this point largely a mix of Douglas Fir and Grand Fir, with a lot of Pinemat Manzanita and Sticky Currants on the ground.

About a quarter of the way around, we started to see evidence of lava and cinders, the trail climbing and the woods giving over to Ponderosa and Lodgepole Pines with a Greenleaf Manzanita understory. Quickly, having traversed the edge of a loose cinder cone, we found ourselves at a set of hot springs into which we put our feet. We planned for this, wearing our water shoes which also came in handy for a couple of spots where the trail was under water and where the trail was really muddy.

This was our first experience ever with hot springs. There are half a dozen or more pits lined with logs and containing clear hot water of varying temperatures. We could see steam coming off the hotter ones and could only keep our feet in the cooler ones for short periods before stepping into the cold water of the lake to cool off. Bubbles would rise from the bottom of the pools and gave off a faint sulfur smell. I read that in certain places, magma is only a mile underground.

Beyond the hot springs and continuing clockwise, we started seeing lots of obsidian chips littering the trail. We quickly came to the edge of an obsidian flow that came right down to the water's edge and we marveled at the way the sun glinted off the hillside. There is a massive flow called the Big Obsidian Flow to the northeast of Paulina Peak, but we didn't visit it on this trip; we saw enough gorgeous volcanic glass in this area of the Lakeshore Loop.

Two thirds around the lake, we came up our least favorite part of the trek, the noisy and busy Little Crater Campground. Shortly after passing through the super-populated campground, we found ourselves on a dubious trail covered in blow-down. Heading inland from the lakeshore, we found the real trail in short order and followed that towards our truck.

In this section on the southern shore of the lake and closest to the peak, the woods changed for the third time. In addition to the two firs, we saw interspersed Larches and Hemlocks. But most noticeable of all was that the groundcover was mainly Littleleaf Huckleberries.

Our circuit of the lake complete, we headed directly into Sunriver for our first visit to the original Sunriver Brewing tap room which we found super busy and super touristy. We prefer the two outposts in Bend to the original pub in Sunriver.

The following photos are in chronological order as we made our way around Lake Paulina clockwise.