Crater Lake National Park

This was my third and Cheryl’s second visit to Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park. I had been there in 1986 on my six-week trip after taking the bar exam, and had been amazed by the intense blue color of the lake. So before Cheryl, our son Ethan and I went there in August 2017, on our way south after seeing the total solar eclipse just a few days earlier, I had been telling both of them what a beautiful sight they were about to see. You can imagine our collective disappointment when we discovered that the caldera was so filled with smoke from nearby wildfires that the surface of the water was just barely visible through the dense gray haze. This is what it looked like back then.

This year, there were several wildfires burning around the Pacific Northwest, so we checked the park’s live webcams before leaving our campground…only to discover that all three cameras were out of service. Great. So with fingers crossed, we drove into the park through the north entrance, and headed up Mount Mazama.

We had reserved seats on the Crater Lake Trolley for a guided tour to some of the park’s best viewpoints.

We don’t love bus tours as a general rule, but in the national parks we usually find that the knowledgable guides add a lot to our understanding and appreciation of the area. Our guide Terry was no exception. He’s been with the trolley company almost since it began offering tours in 2012, and there wasn’t much about Crater Lake that he didn’t know.

The two-hour trolley tour begins at Rim Village, on the southwest side of the caldera, and travels clockwise along the Rim Drive. Normally it goes all the way around the lake, but a section of the Rim Drive was closed for construction, so after going most of the way around, the trolley had to turn around and go back counter-clockwise to return to our starting point.

We had managed to catch a few glimpses of the lake on our drive to the trolley stop at Rim Village, so we knew this visit would work out better than the one in 2017, but we were still blown away by the intense blue color of the water as we viewed the lake from our first stop at Watchman Overlook.

From Watchman Overlook, we had an unmatched view of 750-foot-tall Wizard Island. A massive eruption of Mount Mazama–the mountain on which Crater Lake sits–about 7,700 years ago blew the top off of the 12,000 foot high mountain, leaving a deep basin in its place. Over the next three to four hundred years, smaller eruptions helped seal the floor of the caldera, allowing rain and snowmelt to fill the basin and create Crater Lake. Wizard Island rose 2,500 feet from the floor of the caldera during this time, as lava erupted into the air, cooled quickly and fell as cinders. A small crater rests on Wizard Island’s summit. Magma also erupted under water, forming smooth pillow lava. A second similar vent, Merriam Cone, is hidden from view beneath the lake.

Our next stop was at the Devil’s Backbone overlook. From here, we had a nice view of the other side of Wizard Island and the sky reflected in the still surface of the lake, all framed by the rim of the caldera.

While we were at Devil’s Backbone, our tour guide Terry pointed out the Dragon’s Head rock formation. Some people say that it looks like the head of a dragon, facing to the left with slanted eyes above its nostrils; the rock wall to the right and above it resembles the dragon’s partially outstretched wing as it prepares to take flight. Can you see it?

Continuing clockwise on the Rim Drive brought us to the Steel Bay Overlook. The small bay below is named in honor of William Gladstone Steel (1854-1934), a passionate advocate for the preservation of the Cascade Mountain Range. Steel is known as the “Father of Crater Lake” for his tireless efforts to establish Crater Lake National Park.

While we were at the Steel Bay Overook, Terry told us more about the eruption of Mount Mazama that created Crater Lake. Mazama is part of the chain of Cascade Mountain volcanoes (along with Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, and Mount Saint Helens, among others) which form where the remnants of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate are subducted beneath the North American plate along a 700 mile (1,267 km) zone from northern California to British Columbia. The process of subduction causes tremendous heat and pressure to build up, melting mantle rock to form magma. When the pressurized magma erupts to the earth’s surface, a volcano results.

When 12,000 foot high Mount Mazama erupted 7,700 years ago, it threw 15 cubic miles of material more than 25 miles into the air. (For comparison, you’ve probably seen video of the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens–that eruption ejected “only” one cubic mile of material.) The top mile of Mazama was gone. Geologists estimate that the Mazama eruption was 150 times as powerful as Mount St. Helens; the sound would have been audible as far away as present-day Salt Lake City. Ash and pumice from the eruption traveled around the world, borne by the atmosphere’s upper-level winds. Ash from Mount Mazama has been found in ice cores as far away as Greenland!

From Steel Bay, we could just barely make out the Phantom Ship across the lake. That’s the rock formation in the photo above from 2017, but it is located in the area of the Rim Drive that was closed for construction. You can see it along the water’s edge, near the center of the photo below. Though it resembles a small sailboat, the Phantom Ship is actually as tall as a 16-story building. It’s made of erosion-resistant lava that is 400,000 years old–the oldest exposed rock within the caldera.

Our next stop was at Cleetwood Cove Overlook. From here, it’s possible to descend a one-mile footpath down a steep 700′ drop to the water’s edge for a boat tour on the surface of the lake. The only problem is that you have to walk back up afterward! We could see one of the boats headed for Wizard Island. Terry also tried to point out a weather buoy that is moored over the deepest part of the lake, but we couldn’t make it out. At 1,943’ deep, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and the second deepest in North America. It has no natural inlets–all the water comes from rainfall–and no natural outlets, either. Nature maintains a relatively constant water level through evaporation and seepage of lake water through the porous volcanic rock.

The furthest that our trolley could go before hitting the construction zone was Skell Head Overlook. Stories from the Klamath Indian tradition tell of the many battles here between Spirit chiefs Llao (of the below-world) and Skell (of the above-world). In one visit to the above-world, Llao fell in love with the chief’s daughter. He promised her eternal life if she would live with him below the mountain. She refused, and in anger Llao threatened to destroy her people, rushing up through the opening of his mountain and hurling fire down upon them. Skell took pity on the people and stood on Mount Shasta to defend them. According to the legend, the two Spirit chiefs waged battle, hurling red hot rocks as large as hills, making the earth tremble, and causing fiery landslides. The people fled to the waters of Klamath Lake. Two holy men offered to sacrifice themselves by jumping into the pit of fire on top of Llao’s mountain. Moved by their bravery, Skell drove Llao back underground. When the sun rose, the mountain was gone. It had fallen in on Llao, leaving a large hole. Rains came, filling it with water. The lake became known as Giiwaas, meaning “a most sacred place”.

From Skell Head, our trolley headed counter-clockwise on the Rim Drive back toward Rim Village. We made one last stop at an overlook just north of Watchman, from where we should have been able to see Diamond Peak–another Cascade volcano–beyond Diamond Lake, where our RV was parked. But a thick cloud of smoke from the recently-started Emigrant Fire blocked our view of everything beyond the lake.

After leaving the trolley at Rim Village, we took a short walk toward the historic Crater Lake Lodge. From behind the lodge, we had yet another beautiful view of the lake, with the Sinott Memorial Overlook (visible at left center in the photo) perched high on the rim wall.

It’s nearly impossible to capture the entire width of Crater Lake in one photo, but as we said goodbye to the lake near the lodge, I got this shot that encompassed almost the whole thing.

Mount Mazama is considered to be a dormant, but not extinct, volcano. Deep underground, there is still seismic activity, and it may erupt again one day, bringing further changes to the Crater Lake landscape.