Medicine Lake - Siskiyou County, California

Visited on 6/17/18 returning from a weekend adventurous camping trip where we met up with Jeff’s brother, Brian and his two nieces Hannah and Lauren up at Lava Beds National Monument near Tule Lake, CA.  On our way home we stopped drove into the Modoc National Forest to an elevation of 6,770 above sea level to check out the campgrounds and facilities offered at Medicine Lake.  It is a 640 acre lake that is located 10 miles southwest of Lava Beds National Monument and 30 miles northeast of Mount Shasta, CA.
Medicine Lake is considered one of the most gorgeous lakes in California. It is located far off the beaten path, but the long drive is worth every bump when you catch that first breath-taking glance of the lake sparkling against a backdrop of thick woods. It's deep blue in color and doesn't have any water coming in or out of the lake except for rainfall and snowmelt. Once the center of a volcano, this 640 acre lake is said to be at least 150 feet deep in places.

The lake lies within walking distance of the campsites. There is camping in four national forest campgrounds located along the northeast side of the lake.  Our favorite camping spot was #45 right on the lake shore.

Medicine Lake is in the caldera of the volcano, which measures 4.3 by 7.5 miles. The caldera may have formed by collapse after a large volume of andesite was erupted from vents along the caldera rim. The distribution of late Pleistocene vents, mostly concentrated along the rim, suggests that ring faults already existed when most of the andesite erupted. No single large eruption has been related to caldera formation. The only eruption recognized to have produced ash flow tuff occurred in late Pleistocene time, and this eruption was too small to account for formation of the caldera. Later conclusions were that Medicine Lake caldera formed by collapse in response to repeated extrusions of mostly mafic lava beginning early in the history of the volcano (perhaps in a manner similar to the formation of Kilauea caldera in Hawaii). Several small differentiated magma bodies may have been fed by and interspersed among a plexus of dikes and sills. Late Holocene andesitic to rhyolitic lavas were derived by fractionation, assimilation, and mixing from high alumina basalt parental magma. The small lake from which Medicine Lake volcano derives its name lies within the central caldera.

One of the greatest camping spots on the Lake at #45.