(mm 2197.7) You are approaching the "big lava bed", an 8,200 year-old lava flow that covers an area more than 20 square miles. This is the youngest lava flow in the Indian Heaven volcanic field. For 3.27 trail-miles you will be walking along the west edge of this lava flow. Up close, the lava flow is a vast jumble of basalt flows fractured into a maze of huge lava blocks, fissures, ridges, crevices and collapsed lava tubes, all covered with a stunted lodgepole pine forest.
(mm 2198.8 ) 2.25 miles to the NE you can see the cone that produced this lava flow. It's peak is 691' above you. The flow extends 8 miles south of the cone, and 2 miles north of the cone to the shore of Goose Lake. The lake exists because the lava flow dammed its outlet. Now the lake drains not out a surface outlet, but out a raised lava drain in the middle of the lake. It's unknown where the spill-water goes from there.
(mm 2201.1) Here the PCT crosses FR-60 (Carson-Guler Road) at Crest Horse Camp. This is also where the PCT departs the lava bed. Goose Lake is 4.3 miles down this road to the east. There is a mystery at Goose Lake, one that only emerges from the water when the lake level is low. The mystery is a pair of hand and foot prints impressed into the lava rock when it was still a playable lava flow, and before the dammed lake filled up. The imprints are a mystery because they are well in from the edge of the lava flow and have no prints around them. It's as if someone fell from above onto their hands and feet. Basalt lava becomes solid at 800 F. the lava was well over 1000 F when the prints were made which means whoever belonged to those hands and feet did not survive that moment.
An article about the prints in the Oregonian Newspaper 1926 Dec 05 asserts that scientists had proven they were not carved but certainly pressed into the molten lava. It also recounts an Indian story that attributes the prints to princess Rah-e-na making a suicidal jump into the lava after her love failed to return from a dangerous mission her father had sent him on.
A cast of the prints can be seen at the Trout Lake Ranger Station.
The 1926 article
The 19xx article
Ariel view of Goose Lake and the big lava bed
Goose Lake
The prints under a few inches of water
Goose Lake
To find the prints wait until the water level is low and the island in the middle of the lake is exposed. Start and the boat launch and walk northwest along the east side of the lake, about halfway to the swampy area at the north end. When you reach and large stump that was obviously cut with a chainsaw (the lakeside cut about 5" lower than the cut from the up-hill side) then walk driectly out into the lake from that stump. You will see a lava rock shelf that sits a little off the lake bed. 45°56'28.73"N, 121°45'45.06"W