Crater Lake National Park: Deep Blue Beauty in Oregon’s Cascade Range

Posted on August 27, 2024November 6, 2025 by jim

We arrived at Crater Lake National Park under heavy skies and snow flurries – the mountains create weird weather even in August!
This freak snowstorm gave us enough snow to make a small snowman, and completely shut down Lassen Volcanic National Park to the south of here.
Hopefully they open it quickly, since that’s on our route as we head south from here.
The north entrance to the Park is closed due to the Middle Fork Fire, so we rerouted and looped around to the south entrance. Since our campground is on the south side this isn’t that much of an inconvenience though, and as we continue to head south we would be leaving via this route anyway.
Crater Lake became a National Park in 1902 to protect it’s pure water and prevent development around the perimeter.
The lake is known for deep azure blue water, so beautiful that it looks completely fake. The color changes based on sunlight and your angle to the water – very different from onboard the tour boat than from up on the crater rim.
That blue water is the reason that this writeup took me so long to get done – hundreds of amazing photos that look so similar to each other that it’s very time-consuming to go through the this one or this one process. That’s why there’s so many in this post, I got to the point where I couldn’t make any more decisions.
At 1,949 feet, Crater Lake is the deepest in the United States and tenth deepest in the world. The water is so clear and pure due to only being replenished with rain and snow that it is considered the second-clearest lake in the world.
Water clarity is measured with a black and white Secchi disk which is repeatedly lowered in the water to determine how far down you can see, and Crater had a clarity depth of 139 feet in 1997.
We did the mandatory boat tour to see the lake from a different perspective and to get some history from the narrator on the boat, however the tour is far too long and crowded.
We would recommend the alternative boat ride which drops you off at Wizard Island in the lake for a few hours and then returns to take you back to shore. Hike the cinder cone, or do a little fishing.
Speaking of fish – the trout and kokanee salmon in the lake are non-native and were introduced between 1888 and 1941. As the Park Service would like them gone, there is no bag limit, no size, and artificial lures only so you don’t introduce anything else into the lake.
Despite having fishing gear with me, I didn’t wet a line since we didn’t bring the grill and I’d be crucified if I cooked fish in the RV.
We highly, highly recommend this one to everyone once. Twice may be too much for most folks as there are not that many hiking trails or activities, and you’ll remember this blue water for a lifetime.
This is on our return list when we get old and no longer RV travel, staying at the Crater Lake Lodge overlooking the lake instead of down in the Mazama Village Campground.