Crater Lake <long text>

gnagel · Sep 7, 2017

I've never had much luck with photography at Crater Lake. A few years ago, I had to drive by the lake due to extreme haze from forest fires. This time, I arrived at the North Entrance in the early evening during a short window of clarity. But, I barely made it to Discovery Point before sunset due to long delays from road closures. Thankfully, I captured that sunset as well as a few pictures early the next morning--because after that it was a complete white out of haze (see what I'm talking about by looking at the picture of the haze from the iPhone snap in photo #8)!

That being said, Crater Lake is a very special place and I'm blessed to have spent a couple of days there. Crater Lake is famous for its water clarity and deep blue color. It is the cleanest lake in the world.

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States. The volcano eruption was witnessed by the Klamath tribe thousands of years ago...and the caldera was quickly (a couple of hundred years) filled by rain and snow melt. Crater Lake averages over 500 inches of snow each year...which is part of the reason there is still snow there during my visit in late July.

Here are most of the few photographs that I captured during my visit:

1- from Discovery Point upon my arrival at the Park

2- Phantom Ship early the next morning

3- Wizard Island

4- The Caldera

5- Phantom Ship

6- Wizard Island

7- Forest fires create haze over Cascade Mountains

8- By late morning, the lake was hardly visible. I felt sorry for the photographer from Houston who arrived right about then...and probably spent the next three days looking at similar conditions. (iPhone shot...no processing)

In addition to the road closure (I experienced a 45 minutes delay on three separate occasions), the Watchman Point was closed for repairs. My initial plan was to photograph a sunset from the Watchman's Tower--but that turned out to be too challenging given the parking lot closure and high snow on the trail. I also planned to take a boat ride to Wizard Island...but the boats were under repair as well!