Crater Lake National Park

Toward the end of September in 2023 I visited my cousin and his daughter near Portland, Oregon. I had been wanting to visit Crater Lake for a while, and both my cousin and I had a spare weekend. We only spent one day in the park, and it was a little chilly, since Crater Lake fills a caldera on top of Mt. Mazama. When Mt. Mazama erupted over 7,500 years ago, the major eruption along with other volcanic activity caused the mountain to fall in on itself and formed the caldera which filled with water and created the lake. I have heard that during the summer Crater Lake can get very busy, so when the weather looked halfway decent (meaning no snow on the roads) at the end of September, we decided to check it out. I was partly overcast, and there were a couple rain/slush squalls that came through, but I actually thought it made the lake look even more interesting. There were rainbows between showers, and the sun shining through the clouds made the water appear in different shades of blue as they moved across the lake. We hiked along the ridge for a while, then decided to check out the Pinnacles Trail. I’m not entirely sure how to explain how the pinnacles were formed, but the Park Service has a good explanation here. It was a really easy and fun hike, and the formations are really interesting, I got a picture or two, but it was really hard to do them justice. After the hike we went back to the lake, but the clouds had dropped and the visibility wasn’t great, so we called it a day and headed home.