During the winter the rangers run guided snowshoe hikes once a day on the weekends. Since all of the trails are still closed they need something for people to do, so they are running 3 hikes a day every day until the trails do open.
We signed up yesterday for the 1pm hike. We got to the rim village at about 11 as we wanted to check out the Crater Lake Lodge. It is a 71 room hotel built in the early 1900’s to not the best standards. By the 60’s it was falling apart. It was drastically renovated in the 80’s keeping the rustic style.
They have a great balcony overlooking the lake with lots of old rocking chairs so that’s where we had lunch.
Another flat calm day with perfect reflections.
The debris in the water is from the trees.
The hikes are one and a half hours long, free and they supply the snowshoes. As you can see it is another blazing sunny day so we piled on the sunscreen and the dark sunglasses.
We only ended up walking about a kilometer with lots of stops for the ranger to talk about the native animals and plants.
Deep snow.
At the end the ranger invited everyone to join him in a slide down the hill.
and here is Jennie…
This girl tried to surf down. Going, going …
Finally, we went to the fantastic lookout they have build into the rim and listened to another ranger talk about the volcano.
We learned that Mount St Helen’s put about .06 cubic miles of ash in the air. This volcano put about 12 cubic miles or about 200 times as much. The Yellowstone volcano put out about 480 cubic miles.
The next 4 pictures sweep across the lake.
You just can’t beat that view.
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