Crater Lake

After leaving San Francisco and driving for about three hours, we stopped in Redding, California for the night. From there it was it another 3-4 hour drive to reach Crater Lake National Park in Southern Oregon.

We pulled over at the Crater Lake sign before entering the park to take a picture like we have done at all the Nat'l parks, and were quickly surrounded by mosquitos, so we hurriedly set up the tripod and snapped a few pictures before jumping back in the car to drive to the Visitor Center.

Once there we were able to mail some postcards, and get a trail map from the friendly volunteer working there. We then drove along the West Rim road, which had probably been snowplowed recently. On the sides of the West Rim road there was some snowdrifts that were easily 10 feet tall! The East Rim road was still closed due to snow and ice.

Further up the road we stopped at a nice overlook of the lake, where we walked up to the fencing on the edge of a cliff to see the whole lake spread out below us. There were two different sections to this overlook, one having been cleared of snow and the other hadn't been cleared so here the snow was flush to the top of the 3ft fence. The lake itself was awesome, pretty big with small island breaking the otherwise placid surface of the lake. The mountains behind the lake reflected almost perfectly on the water, making for a really great view. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States, the ninth deepest in the world. Truly spectacular! 

After spending 10 minutes or so looking at and taking pictures of the lake we ate lunch and then changed into more snow appropriate clothing, so we could go across the road and play in the snow. The average snowfall for Crater lake per year is 544 inches, that's about 44 feet! The greatest cumulative snowfall for one season was 879 inches, which equals right over 73 feet!! For us Texans who might (keyword 'might') get like an inch of snow during winter, that's unimaginable! So of course we had a blast playing in the snow, though we sadly didn't have any cardboard or a plastic tub big enough to sled in. In some places the snow had crusted over enough that we were able to ski down the hill with just our boots on, and then we discovered that with our rain jackets on you could run and jump over backwards and slide down on your back, at the cost of not being able to see where you were going. :-)

So hiking up some of the hills here we found out what it was like to 'post-hole up to your knees in snow'. Once a couple of hours had passed, and our pants and boots were thoroughly soaked, we trekked back to the car and drove to another overlook where Jacob got out his camera and I got out my Quadcopter to get some aerial footage of the lake.

We parked the car right outside the park to repack our camera gear and wet clothes, but we got immediately surrounded by so many mosquitos that we ditched that idea and just drove on to the hotel and repacked everything there. 

Next Stop: The Finley's, Washington

-John