When
I sent out 3-day backcountry ski around Crater Lake leoralore, one of my
long-time friends wrote to me to tell me how jealous he was, as he had always
wanted to snowshoe around Crater Lake. I asked him (Ryan) when he was
free, as I was willing to go around again, and I was quite curious to compare
my cross country ski experience with a snow shoe experience. After his
initial self-reaction of “I’m too busy”, he realized that he could, in fact, do
it, and we compared calendars, and came up with going 4/22-28, to allow plenty
of time. When I told others that we were going to do this, we got some
more takers. Ryan started to get worried that the group was getting too
big, and after a while I told him “watch – in the end, it will just be the two
of us.” I don’t know if I should be delighted that I was right, or sorry
that the others bowed out (they told us that the timing didn’t work for them
and they’d do it the following week), but since I tend to think of things in
the positive sense, I was happy that I turned out to be right.
Ryan
obtained train tickets to go from Seattle to Portland on Sunday, 4/21, and with
no one else’s schedule to have to work with, we chose to drive down on
Sunday. The weather forecast was perfect for when we planned on being out
there, and what’s more, a spectacular meteor shower was forecast for the
first night, as well.
I
expected adventure on the trail, but didn’t realize that getting there would
also turn out to be an adventure. When Rita had driven down there the previous
month, we’d seen a shortcut on the map from the Highway 97 route to the Highway
62 route that leads into Crater Lake. Since there was a lot of snow at
the higher elevations, and we knew that the shortcut road was frequently closed
in winter, we chose to do the long 97 to 62 route, then. But, hey – this
was a whole month later, and the first time, we didn’t even SEE the shortcut
road on the way down there. This time, I wanted to try it. On the
map that we were using this time, we didn’t see any “closed during winter”
signs for that road (but did for others), but we did notice a difference in
colors used for the roads. Ryan checked the key, and we realized that we
were looking for an 18-mile (29 km) dirt road short cut. That wasn’t as
appealing, but, gosh, I still wanted to try it. We decided that if it
were a good dirt road, we’d go for it. If it was not, we’d do the 32 mile
(51.5km) black top route. We missed the entrance to the short cut road,
but noticed that there was another road that would take us to it. We
found that one, and it was a nice dirt road. 3 miles down that, and we
got to the short cut road.
Now, I’m sure that anyone who has done a lot of hiking or climbing has already been cringing when seeing the word “shortcut.” It usually means hours more work for everyone when someone takes a “shortcut”. . . Why make an exception here? The short cut road wasn’t in quite as nice shape as the connector road, but it was still pretty decent. Another 5 miles down, we started seeing trees down over the road. We started to worry that we’d get really close to the end, and a tree too big to move, would be lying across the road. However, mile after mile, we were able to get around all of the obstacles, and things were looking good, even though the road was deteriorating. Finally, we got to the pass, and saw the snow:
This
is a still picture that I grabbed from the video that we took after we got
stuck many times in the snow. In general, the car would only go as far as
we shoveled, so we wound up doing a lot of shoveling. Fortunately,
this was pretty close to getting through all of the snow. In the end, it
probably took about ½ hour or so to get through this section. We’d
already walked beyond this point about ¼ mile (.4km) or so, just to see if we
could expect more of the same before we chose to try to drive through this, and
thought that we’d probably be ok, so we risked it. We hoped that a downed
tree wouldn’t be further down the road, since having to turn around and go back
through that snow pack, up hill, would likely have been even more work. . .
Fortunately, the rest of the road was clear, and when we saw that we could get
all the way to Highway 62, we turned around and looked for a good camping
place. We’d not even gotten to Crater Lake, and we already had our first
adventure!!!
We
found a nice campsite. It turns out that Ryan is quite similar to me when
it comes to camping, although, since he doesn’t get as cold as I do when he
sleeps, he can be even more Spartan than I am. He only had one insulating
mat, and no bivvy sack nor tent. We made dinner, and then went to bed,
leaving the rest of the drive to the headquarters, where we would pick up our
backcountry permits, for the next day.
Since
last month, the headquarter hours expanded from 10am-4pm to 9am-5pm, and so we
were able to pick up our permit as soon as we arrived, which was a pleasant
surprise. This time, we started the trip from the headquarters, taking
the 1.5 mile (2.5km) Raven’s trail to the Rim Village, so that we could boast
of doing the entire circumference, not that anyone *really* cares, but,
hey, why not? Here is Ryan’s picture of me as we started off:
I
was shocked at how much more parking lot there was at the Rim Village compared
to a month ago. As well, the road crews had started working on clearing
the Rim road, so we had to walk the next 3 miles (5 kilometers) of the road –
we could have snowshoed along the side of the road, but it would have been
silly. Several bikers were on that road, and a couple of hikers.
There were nowhere near as many people as the prior month, but this was a
Monday, compared to getting there on a Sunday, the previous month. After
3 miles, we saw 2 snow plows, and one snow thrower working. When they saw
us, they made a ramp for us, and allowed us to pass. The snow thrower was
absolutely amazing – not only were they big beasts (Ryan being gobbled up by
one):
But
they were very impressive in the snow that they could throw:
The
snow in the middle of this picture is being thrown up some 30-50 ft
(9-15m). We were scared for the guys operating the equipment because they
would get soooooo close to these cliff edges. They told us that in that
section they worked very slowly because of the danger, and could only clear .2
or .3 miles (.3 or .5km) per day.
The
rim of the lake looked vastly different, with the northern side almost completely
devoid of snow:
Llao
Rock is on the left (I had a picture of that in last month’s leoralore).
This is looking from the western side of the rim toward the north of the
lake.
Fortunately,
the southern part of the rim still looked pretty, and I realized that I should
take a picture of the Cure JM (Cure Juvenile Myositis) banner, here, as well:
This
also was pretty much the view that I had from my campsite (which was at the
junction to the north entrance road).
I
was a tad worried about where Ryan had chosen to camp, and went around to get a
view of where he was versus the underlying ground:
He
was safe, but the cornice was definitely hanging out significantly over the
edge of the underlying rock.
This
first night was absolutely miserable for me, as the winds were horrible,
here. I *knew* that they would be, and wasn’t at all interested in
camping near here, but Ryan loved the wide open space. I consented after
finding a gully protected by trees, but the wind was rather fierce, and
battered my tent all night long, sucking any warm that it afforded, away.
I hardly slept at all. And even though I’d been looking forward to
the meteor shower that was supposed to be at the height in the wee hours of
that morning, and I was getting up to pee, regularly, I saw nary a shooting
star. Ryan saw a bunch just as the moon was setting, so he was
happy. He told me that he was on the edge of warmth. I was a heck
of a lot happier the rest of our nights, as they were all much more sheltered,
and although I looked each night for meteors, I saw none. And the moon
was so bright that I never used a headlamp at night.
I
should note that the last people we saw on our trip were two people who were
also camped on the rim at the north entrance road junction, and we saw no more
until three days later when we arrived back at the park headquarters
building!
Since
neither of us had any pressing time constraints, we were able to take a
leisurely walk around the lake, and take in some side trails as well. One
of them was the Cleetwood Cove Trail down to the lake (where the boat tours to
Wizard Island and other parts of the lake commence). Much of the snow was
melted completely away. Where it still existed, it was pretty easy to
negotiate. There were a few trees that had fallen, and an amazing rock
avalanche, which definitely served as a reminder that the rock faces all
presented considerable rock danger during this freeze/thaw time of year.
The water looked pristine:
The
above was taken right at the water’s edge. I was very amazed at the
clarity of the water – how I could see every rock so very clearly. Mt.
Scott is the snow mountain in the background.
The
below picture had the water measurement building, with the water having just a
hint of the turquoise color in the water that we saw so prevalently while
there:
Another
side trip was going up to the top of Cloudcap at 8065ft (2458m) and looking
down upon the lake:
We
also did an attempt on Mt. Scott. While we could have made our own way,
had we been dedicated, we couldn’t find any sign of the designated trail, the
snow at that hour was quite mushy, and the terrain was steep:
so
we elected to return to our packs and find our last night’s
accommodation.
My
memory on the previous trip was a little mixed up, so we did a slight back and
forth, but ended up camping out at the Phantom Ship overlook which gave these
two spectacular views in the morning:
The
above is of the “Phantom Ship” island, and the below is of Wizard Island across
the lake:
And
that funny-looking surface? Ice, on the lake that (almost) never
freezes!!!
Our
final views of the lake were at Sun Notch, which was also our final side trip:
The
above is the other side of Phantom Ship Island, and the below is of the
northern side of the crater, with Mt. Thielsen rising above it:
Yet
another spectacular trip.
But
that wasn’t the end of the adventure. No, to top it all off, the
following day, we went exploring the eastern ridge of King’s Mountain, and
while I’d explained to Ryan that this would be off-trail, exploratory,
rigorous, and steep, he re-interpreted what I was saying given his prior
experience of what others consider rigorous, steep, and off-trail. He
decided that I was trying to kill him when we got to this upper section of the
trail, and he found a way around this type of area which he described as a
place where you can die if you slip. . .:
The
drop-off to my left is a mere 1000 ft (300m) or so. . . Some people refer
to that as “exposure.”
We
went at a leisurely pace stopping to enjoy the incredible views that this side
of the mountain afforded us (and which the regular southern route does not),
and it took us 5 hours to get up. We were able to get down the southern
route in less than an hour.
A
most satisfying ending to a week of the outdoors and spectacular views.
Ryan
assures me that he’ll be incorporating our photos on his website, www.walking4fun.com, where one can do
one’s own “virtual walk” of the trails he has already hiked and photographed,
so, if you want, you’ll be able to experience a bit of what we enjoyed, by
“walking” that trail on his website. I’ll have to give a shout out when
it’s ready.
May
your days be filled with great adventures!
leora
P.S. Ryan did his own write-up here, and in subsequent posts.
