Late October, 2018

It should really be called Caldera Lake, just saying. We tried for about 4 weeks to get here last summer, but wildfires closed roads and obscured the lake for the time we were near here, but we made it this year – and the weather was warm and sunny! Some years the Rim Road is closed by snow in late October! And stays closed until late May into June- some years they get 43 feet of snow here!!

Crater Lake has a fascinating geologic history- Mount Mazama, a volcano in the “Rim of Fire” took millions of years to build itself into a 12,000 ft peak. Then, just 7700 years ago, the magma pool beneath the mountain started to build and build, and the mountain started to vent some of the magma and steam out- in many, many places that formed a circle around the mountain at about 7,000 ft. One day- literally in a few hours- all the vents started to spew ash, pumice and lava at once and the magma pool beneath the mountain started to empty. Then the top of the mountain – 5000ft of the top- dropped straight down into the void where the magma had been! The mountain was now only 7000 ft tall with a 4,000 ft crater. Everything within 30 miles was flattened and killed; ash was dispersed hundreds of miles away- through Montana and into Canada. Over time the crater filled with rain and snow- it filled about halfway up the crater. There are no inlets or outlets to this lake, so the water level stays about the same. The water, at it’s deepest in 1963ft deep! The purity of this water plus it’s depth is what makes it the “bluer than blue” color that it is famous for. So, a crater has no water in it- a caldera does 🙂

We spent the day driving around the 33 mile Rim Road, stopping at many, many viewpoints- It is an amazing lake and well worth the effort it took for us to get here.