Category: Landscapes

Crater Lake in early May, originally uploaded by dmzajac2004-.

Via Flickr:
Copyright © 2012 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

While in OR this past May we were only an 1.5 hours drive from Crater Lake so we spent our last afternoon and evening here. The weather and scenery didn’t disappoint.

Nikon D700| Nikkor 24mm @f16| 1/125second| ISO 200| Manual Priority| Tripod| 4 frame Pano stitched in CS6

For the historians:
The lake was formed after the collapse of an ancient volcano, posthumously named Mount Mazama. This volcano violently erupted approximately 7,700 years ago. That eruption was 42 times as powerful as the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The basin or caldera was formed after the top 5,000 feet of the volcano collapsed. Subsequent lava flows sealed the bottom, allowing the caldera to fill with approximately 4.6 trillion gallons of water from rainfall and snow melt, to create the seventh deepest lake in the world at 1,932 feet.

Rolling mountains, volcanic peaks, and evergreen forests surround this enormous, high Cascade Range lake, recognized worldwide as a scenic wonder. On summer days, neither words or photographs can capture Crater Lake’s remarkable blueness. For much of the year, usually October to July at higher elevations, a thick blanket of snow encircles the lake. Snowfall provides most of the park’s annual 66 inches of precipitation.

Crater Lake rarely freezes over completely; it last did in 1949. Heat from the summer sun stored in the immense body of water retards ice formation throughout the winter. On the earth clock, natural forces only recently constructed this landscape. Lava flows first formed a high plateau base on which explosive eruptions then built the Cascade volcanoes. Humans probably witnessed the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Mazama about 7,700 years ago.
~Crater Lake National Park Service