Crater Lake

Crater Lake National Park is one of those places every Oregonian wants to see. We see images of Crater Lake just about every day on license plates and on the Oregon quarter. There are many places in Oregon that have stunning beauty, but the scale and majesty of Crater Lake leave it in a category by itself.  

I did not expect our visit would be mostly spent in the car.  Visitors have two options for exploring the lake.  You can drive around it, stopping at scenic overlooks (either in your own car or on a tour trolly) and you can take a boat ride onto the lake.   Crater Lake is six miles wide and very round, with steep cliffs encircling the lake, and the only trail down to the lake is at the boat launch. The boat rides were pricey and had long since been reserved.  The park itself was rather crowded, so although the roads were not congested, the scenic overlooks were packed. Almost half a million people visit each year, most naturally choosing to come when the rim drive is clear of snow and the lake is not likely to be shrouded in fog, which gives them just a couple of months in the summer.  Next time, I hope to get a boat tour, which are offered July 25- Sept. 18, weather permitting.  They are already predicting an especially wet winter here, so extra snowfall may delay tours a bit longer in 2012.

Aside from seeing stunning views of the lake, I wanted Jasper to get a sense of the history of the place and the forces that created it.  About 7,700 years ago, Mt. Mazama blew up in a spectacular eruption, and collapsed into a caldera, which has slowly filled with water to form the deepest lake in the United States.  The force of the explosion dusted the northwest with ash as far as central Canada, and ash from the explosion has been found in Greenland.  One of the more interesting things about this explosion is that the Klamath Native Americans were able to tell explorers about it, having preserved the story as an oral tradition for all those years.  A short film in the Steel Information Center touches on this history, but it might have been far more meaningful for Jasper if I'd realized it would be a good idea to seek out a good book or film on Crater Lake before our visit.  I assumed they would have great educational exhibits there, and they did not.  The film emphasizes the battle that took place to make this into a national park, and certainly gets across the idea that individual citizens can make a huge difference.