Guide to Crater Lake National Park | KTNPBlog

Welcome to the KTNP blog guide to Crater Lake National Park. We're going to go over everything we experienced and we hope it helps plan your trip. The main highlight of the park is the titular Crater Lake. Outside the lake though are many trails, forests, mountains, geological features, and much more. In the park we mainly focused on hiking, camping, and boat tours of the lake itself, but you can also go backpacking, fishing, bicycling, skiing, and more. We visited Crater Lake in the summer of 2017. We had been looking forward to visiting the park for a long time and in terms of natural beauty it exceeded our expectations. It was created in 1902 and is the fifth oldest national park in the United States. The park protects the namesake Crater Lake which is the caldera of an ancient volcano called Mount Mazama. It was formed by a volcanic eruption that occurred 7,700 years ago. Mount Mazama is currently dormant though. No streams flow in or out of the lake so all of the water in the lake is from snow or rain. The lake itself is the deepest in the United States and ninth deepest in the world. In the center of the lake is a landmass called Wizard Island. Crater Lake National Park is located in western central Oregon. There are no major cities or towns nearby and it feels like it's in the middle of nowhere, which it kind of is. The park is 183,224 acres which is similar in size to Shenandoah and Voyager's national parks. In 2019 it had over 700,000 visitors though the bulk of visitation is in summer. Much of the park is blanketed with snow in the winter and partially closed. Most of the services in the park are located near the south rim. There are two campgrounds and one lodge in the park. The first and largest campground is Mazama which is managed by a concessionaire. The second campground is Lost Creek which is smaller and managed by the park service. Both campgrounds are located a few miles away from the lake's rim. The park has one option for lodging other than campgrounds which is Crater Lake Lodge. The historic lodge, built in 1915, is located on the south rim of Crater Lake. The park has two visitor centers. Steel Visitor Center is on the south side of the lake and is the larger of the two. It's also the park headquarters. The second visitor center is Rim Village which naturally is near the lake's rim. With the area being fairly remote it's a good thing that there are a couple of restaurants within the park. Annie Creek Restaurant, Rim Village Cafe, and Crater Lake Lodge Dining Room. The quality varies and all are somewhat expensive. The lodge has the best food of the three though. As discussed there are two front country campgrounds in the park Mazama and Lost Creek. Mazama is managed by a private concessionaire which is currently Aramark. When we went though it This is the only campground in the park that accepts reservations. It's a large campground and we found it to be an okay one but we've been to better ones. The system for selecting your sites is unnecessarily complicated and sites could have been better maintained. That said, given the size of the campground it was quiet and its location is good for exploring the park. The smaller Lost Creek campground is all first-come first-served campsites. The campground is managed by the park service. We didn't stay here but wished we had as it seemed to be more private. Other than campgrounds the other place to stay the night is at Crater Lake Lodge. The lodge can be expensive and hard to get reservations for but it is worth it. The rooms aren't anything to write home about but the views from the lodge are spectacular and the location is unbeatable. The lodge itself is conveniences, a gift shop, water bottle filling station, restrooms, and more. Steel Visitor Center also shows a film about the park which we recommend viewing. Also of note is the Sinot Memorial Overlook which is built into the caldera of the lake. Close to the Rim Village Visitor Center, the overlook has great views and an interesting museum about the geological history of Crater Lake. There's plenty of hikes in and around Crater Lake but our first hike was actually on the northern edge of the park nowhere near the lake. Boundary Springs is a 5.4 mile out and back trail that leads to the headwaters of the Rogue River. The trail starts in Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest before entering Crater Lake National Park. The trail goes through previously burned areas while following the river most of the way back to the spring. Compared to other hikes in the park it's not heavily traveled and makes for a great trail with lots of water and solitude but there's not a lot of scenic views if that's what you're looking for. At the end of the trail are numerous springs which form Rogue River which seems to magically emerge from the earth. If you're looking for a trail with views, Mount Scott is the one you want. Located on the east side of Crater Lake, the trail goes up to the highest point in the park. It's a very popular trail though so you will not have solitude unless you go here at off times. The trail is dusty, sun exposed, and switchbacky as it ascends. When we hiked the trail we were lucky as the California tortoiseshell butterfly was migrating in the area so thousands of butterflies had descended upon the mountain. At the top of Mount Scott is a fire tower built in 1926 and still in use today. There are panoramic views of Crater Lake and the surrounding mountains. One of the newest trails in the park is Plakeney Falls. Built in 2011, it's an easy two-mile trail to the impressive Namesake Falls. While this trail is wheelchair accessible, there are some stairs at the very end to get closer to the falls. We recommend going in the afternoon for better lighting. South of Plakeney Falls is another short easy hike called the Pinnacles. Skirting the rim of a canyon, the sandy trail provides views of volcanic pinnacles that were created when Mount Mazama erupted. Hot steam came up out of the ground, hardening the ash around it. Over time, the surrounding ash and soil eroded, revealing the hardened pinnacles. Lady of the Woods is a short trail right outside of Steel Visitor Center. There's a guide booklet that gives information at numbered markers along the hike. When we hiked it, there were so many mosquitoes that we didn't really enjoy the trail. It's known for a rock sculpture of a woman at the end. Adjacent to the park's west border is Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest. Burke Creek Trail runs from the National Forest into Crater Lake National Park, where it joins up with Bald Crater Loop Trail. The trail isn't anything special. The main reason we went there was because I wanted to see if I could find a sphagnum bog and see the carnivorous plants there. We didn't find the bog, even though we found a sign for it. Finding it would have required bushwhacking. Since we were already getting eaten by mosquitoes, we decided to turn around. Oh my gosh. Hold on. Crater Lake gets a ton of snow each year, so some trails don't open until very late in the summer. The Watchman Peak Trail, located on the west side of Crater Lake, only opened a few days before we hiked it. We did have to go through a bit of snow, but a path was carved out for us. The trail goes up to a fire tower where we had our best view of Wizard Island that we had seen. There were a couple of small wildfires in and outside the park that we saw too from the top. Garfield Peak Trail is located at the south end of Crater Lake, right next to Crater Lake Lodge. Like Watchman Peak, Garfield Peak doesn't usually open until later in the year because of snow. When we did the trail in late July, it was still partially closed. We got to about a quarter mile away from the summit. Even if it's partially closed though, Garfield Peak Trail is one of the best trails for close-up views of the lake. The only way to the lakeshore of Crater Lake is via the Cleetwood Cove Trail. The trail features a steep one-mile descent over 800 feet. Coming back up is another strenuous mile with the sun exposure and incline, so make sure to have plenty of water available and take breaks as needed. At the bottom of the trail is a boat dock for lake tours as well as an area for fishing and swimming. There are a few spots where people jump into the lake which can be a cool 60 degrees but while on our trip boats to Wizard Island weren't running, so we were only able to do the lake tour which is a counter-clockwise circumnavigation of the lake. A park ranger narrates the tour showing various features along the lake and giving history lessons. You get great views from a completely different perspective. We'd recommend this, it was one of the highlights of our trip. Magma from down below the earth's surface had to be transported up through some sort of vent to where it could spill onto the top or the side of the volcano and those vents are called volcanic dikes, d-i-k-e. Usually people ask me why is the water backpacking in the park, but due to some stormy weather we weren't able to. There are five designated backcountry campsites, Bybee Creek, Dutton Creek, Grouse Hill, Lightning Springs, and Red Cone Springs. Besides these, dispersed camping is also permitted with certain restrictions. If you're interested in backpacking, here's a couple of routes that we had considered. The one that we were going to do was Bald Crater Loop, which we were going to start from the Boundary Springs trailhead. It would have gone by Boundary Springs and Sphagnum Bog and was around a 19 mile loop. We ended up doing Boundary Springs as a day hike instead. Besides that route, we also considered doing an out and back trip to Union Peak along the PCT with a short trip beyond the park's borders to Stewart Falls. There's plenty of other options to consider in the park, but these were just the two that most interested us. We greatly enjoyed our trip to Crater Lake, but there were some things that we wanted to do that we didn't get the chance to. Due to boat maintenance issues, we weren't able to get to Wizard Island and do the hikes there. Additionally, we didn't have the time to hike up to Crater Peak or Union Peak. Someday, we'll make it back to do all of that and explore even further. For detailed information on everything you saw in this video, please check out our website, k2npblog.com. Thanks for watching, and please like or subscribe.