Forever on Our Mind: Crestfallen at Crater Lake
When a trip to Oregon's only national park goes up in smoke
02. Crestfallen at Crater Lake
August 2015:
Looking back now, there were plenty of signs that I shouldn’t have gone to Crater Lake National Park in the summer of 2015.
Lakeside sites at Diamond Lake Campground, not far from the park’s northern entrance in the heart of the Cascades, should have been booked for months. But when I made reservations in early August, for mid-August, I could choose among dozens of open sites. Meanwhile, a concerned friend canceled her own overnight stay at Diamond Lake before warning me that a wildfire was ravaging roughly 20,000 forested acres inside (and around) the national park. And when I solicited food, drink, and hiking recommendations on Facebook, one wary acquaintance shared only links to the latest wildfire updates.
But, recently jobless, I’d already decided on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Crater Lake in Southern Oregon—and figured that something as small as an out-of-control wildfire couldn’t possibly ruin my visit. I’d lived my entire life in the Pacific Northwest—nearly 33 years at that point—and had only ever seen the sapphire-hued lake on Instagram, in visitor guides, and on the side of vodka bottles. With time to kill, a growing curiosity about Oregon’s only national park, and a lakeside campsite reservation, I wanted to fix that.
In the days leading up to the trip, I could have done literally anything else—call the park to ask about conditions, check webcams to see how bad the smoke really was, read a single news story about the fire, or (and this is crazy) stay home to apply for jobs.
But I figured: It’s fine. Campfires send smoke billowing upward—so why wouldn’t wildfires? Isn’t that how fire works? How much smoke could possibly sink into the caldera that houses Crater Lake?
That’s exactly how much I thought I put into it: Fire burns, smoke goes up, I look down, I enjoy the sights. It’s just science.
It is not, in fact, “just science”—but I didn’t know that at the time. So after about 30 seconds of something less than soul searching, I packed my car, threw a few beers and a pack of hot dogs in my cooler, and started driving south on a Monday morning in mid-August.
After five hours of driving, and under sunless skies, I found myself alone at the park’s southern entrance station—where a ranger handed me a map and wished me well with all the joy of a debt collector. I had officially, finally, entered Crater Lake National Park.
I raced up the slopes of the onetime Mount Mazama with the reckless abandon of a child running to the living room on Christmas morning. Never mind that I couldn’t see the sun overhead; those were just clouds, not smoke, and they’d break at any moment. I just knew it.
After about 15 minutes, I arrived at Rim Village, stopped at the first roadside pull-out I saw, and walked toward the edge of the caldera—a few hundred feet above the lake’s shimmering surface. I was ready to be overwhelmed, to marvel, to cry at the impossible spectacle of it all.
Sure enough: My throat tightened. My eyes welled up almost immediately. I squinted through the tears.
It wasn’t the sweeping expanse or rich blue complexion that inspired my visceral reaction; it was the smoke. All of the smoke. So much smoke. An impossible amount of smoke. And every last tendril was assaulting my senses with a swiftness and tenacity that, frankly, felt personal.
Before me sat Crater Lake, which began forming when the walls of Mount Mazama collapsed after a massive eruption roughly 7,700 years ago; centuries of rainfall and snowmelt followed, gradually filling the hollowed-out caldera and creating Crater Lake.
Today, the lake sits within a basin that measures five miles by six miles at its widest points and, in all, holds enough water to fill more than 7 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. Under sunny skies, Crater Lake’s distinctive shade of blue is made possible by its remarkable clarity and depth (1,943 feet); at that point, long wavelengths of light are absorbed far under the surface, leaving behind a glassy lake covered in cobalt.
At least, I assume that’s all true. I wouldn’t have known that day, because all I saw was an ashy haze perched defiantly inside the caldera before me—and engulfing the surrounding forest as far as I could see.
Admittedly, that wasn’t very far. The lake’s typically clear surface retreated from view, cozying up under a fuzzy, smoke-colored blanket. The unrepentant cloud painted over rock formations lining the lake’s rim. I could have stood over a campfire for the same view—and would have at least gotten s’mores out of that.
No songbirds chattered in the hemlock trees beside me. No children let out excited whoops. No pick-ups roared into the pull-out, and no one’s camera clicked, because no one was there with me at the viewpoint.
They must have checked the webcams that morning. And next time, so would I.
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