Heart Lake Potential Wilderness
 Size: Approximately 17,808 acres
Managing agency: Lassen National Forest
Location: In Shasta and Tehama counties bordering the western boundary of Lassen Volcanic National Park
Highlights:
- The area's namesake, Heart Lake, provides excellent swimming and camping and makes a great day-trip destination.
- The popular Heart Lake National Recreation Trail passes through it.
- Scientists consider some of the area's meadows to be benchmarks of ecological health.
Description: This volcano-covered and glacier-carved wild land borders Lassen Volcanic National Park on the west. The region is covered with impressive old-growth forests of pine and fir, as well as meadows, aspen groves, lakes and ponds. The proposed wilderness serves as an important migration corridor for deer moving in and out of the Lassen highcountry as the seasons change. Scientists have studied some of the area's meadows because they are considered "benchmarks" of ecological health. In other words, they are so undisturbed that they are considered models by which we can judge the condition of other meadows in the Cascades. Recognizing the region's ecological values, the University of California recommended that the area be managed as an ancient forest reserve, and declared Heart Lake itself an "ecologically sensitive natural area."
The popular Heart Lake National Recreation Trail bisects the proposed wilderness area and offers easy access to deep-blue Heart Lake. Local legend has it that the normally shallow Heart Lake has a bottomless hole in its center. The Forest Service has recommended to Congress that most of the Heart Lake area be protected as wilderness.
For additional information, please contact:
Sierra Club, Shasta Group
P.O. Box 993323
Redding, CA 96099
Phone: (530) 246-3087
|
Just three miles off of Interstate 80, 
