Crater Lake To Stanley, Day 2 : Curiosity

I’m down at the Rocky Point Resort, on the west edge of Upper Klamath Lake, standing on a boat dock. The old fellow there is advising me on the type of watercraft to use for my exploration of the nature preserve.

“You could get in this canoe if you want something really stable. See, it’s got cross-bars. Problem is, since there’s just you, you can’t use the front bench or the rear bench. If you do, you’ll paddle a lot but the canoe will just spin around, because the other end will be sticking up out of the water. So you’ll have to kneel in the middle, and row it from there. It’ll be a lot of work.”

“What, you mean, I have to sit down on my knees, the whole time?”

“Yep. You might want to try a kayak instead. Ever used one?”

“Years ago, yes. Never launched one from a boat dock before.”

“Well I can help you with that…”

He takes me around to a stack of plastic kayaks and selects a stout-looking teal one with a wide bottom, and straps an L-shaped seat cushion into it. He grabs one end of the kayak and I grab the other, and together we walk it over to the side of the dock and lower it into the river. Then he squats down and grabs the lip of the kayak, holding it tight against the side of the dock.

“Climb on in,” he says.

I toss my backpack in and carefully arrange myself in the kayak, legs shoved under the front, backpack between my knees. The man stands up and passes me a double-edged plastic oar. I sit there unsteadily on the water for a while, very slowly testing my balance, and making hesitant jabs with the oar.

Eventually the man asks, “how’s that workin’ for you?” He’s a few yards away, applying paint to the side of a dry-docked canoe.

“Good so far … I have to remember how to balance this thing.”

I take my sweet time – I’m on vacation, after all, and this boat trip is the only thing on my to-do list for the whole day – and eventually I become confident enough with the oar that I can paddle around the border of the dock. I give the man a thumbs-up, take a picture with my camera, and then head off towards the swamps of the preserve, on the opposite side of the slow-flowing river.

As the morning ebbs into the afternoon I slowly regain my skills with the kayak. By the end of the day I’ll have logged nine hours in it.

Many pictures transpire!

The lake is home to tons of aquatic plants, dimly visible beneath the water:

The water itself has a greenish, silty character. It’s like paddling through a gigantic cup of tea.

Not all the plants live underwater of course. Some are amphibious. They start growing on the lake bottom, and then change appearance only slightly when they begin to protrude from the water.

Here’s a plant of the same species that has stayed under water. Check out the tracery of sticky webbing left by some aquatic insect.

Here’s a very different, strictly underwater plant. See all those little nodules on it? What do you suppose those are for?

Most of the preserve is covered with aquatic plants. These broad-leaved specimens began life three or four feet under the water, and the leaves only reached the open air when they were most of the way grown.

It’s actually possible to kayak your way through this foliage, but an incredible amount of squiggly worms, snails, beetles, larvae, and pond scum will stick to you along the way. Easier to go around.

The broad, flat plants compete with the tall grasses for the same shallow water along the borders, with the grass crowding down from the dry shore and the flat plants marching up from the deeper water.

Sometimes the current is a bit too strong for the underwater plants, and the grass can grow unchallenged, and sometimes the water is unsuitable for other reasons, like a lack of sun:

Here’s an interesting formation. The logs trapped underwater prevented the dirt on top of them from eroding long enough for plants to grow on the dirt, anchoring it in place. The effect reminds me of Jim Henson’s swamp environment in The Dark Crystal. I expect those little tufts to sprout eyes and teeth any moment.

Of course the preserve is home to many birds as well. I see this fellow taking off and manage to get the camera up, but I don’t have time to adjust the settings, so the result is blurry. Oh well.

In the more open sections of water, I encounter many honking geese:

Honk honk honk!!!

Crater Lake To Stanley, Day 1 : Curiosity

I’m on my way down from Crater Lake, and have stopped at one of the scenic turnouts to adjust my luggage. Afterwards I stretch my legs a bit, walking around with the camera, and end up looking down the edge of a cliff at a rushing river.

You know how it is. The very fact that something’s got an edge compels people to look over it.

Later on, I’m cycling across the wide valley surrounding Fort Klamath, and this piece of cloth catches my eye. How did it end up stuck to a post over a ditch on the side of the road? Did some farmer lose a scrap of his pants while wiring the fence?

Down the next long road, I encounter this sign:

I don’t think so, Oregon farmers. Congestion is what you get when you’re driving over Highway 17 into San Jose at 9:00am on Monday morning. Cows crossing the road? A tractor blocking a lane? That’s just an excuse to stop and have a picnic.

About three hours later I climb out of the valley, heading southwest, and during one of my frequent breaks to guzzle water or sip my root beer, I find this specimen in the road:

Probably only dead for a couple of days. Then, as I’m completing the day’s journey and checking in at the Rocky Point Resort, I discover this fellow walking around on the back of my bike:

Dig those big stripey antennae, yo!

Crater Lake To Stanley, Day 0 : Curiosity 2

I’ve never been to Crater Lake, and even though I’m dead-on-my-feet tired (which is no way to start a bike tour), I notice that there are daily boat tours of the surface of the lake – a great way to see it up close and personal. The catch is, you need to walk some 500 feet down from the rim of the crater, on a steep switchback trail, to get to the boat launch. Dad graciously agrees to hang around while I go on the tour, and he drives around exploring the rim to kill some time. Meanwhile, I slog down the trail, slapping at hundreds of mosquitoes, with my camera held in one fist.

From the head of the trail, looking down the steep sides of the crater, I can see the water between the trees. It reflects the color of the sky so perfectly that the only way I can tell it’s water is by the ripples from the wind.

Further down the trail, the lake fills up more of the space between the ground and the sky. If you hold your hand up in front of your eyes and cover the far wall of the canyon, the lake becomes the sky. It’s pretty weird.

The lake is enormous. During the boat ride, I asked the guide why the crater didn’t just fill up, then overflow, and erode a channel in some part of the cliff wall, destroying the lake. He replied that there are several theories of why this didn’t happen, but the most popular one involves the porous nature of some of the volcanic deposits. Above a certain level, the water meets the edges of these deposits and seeps through, forming springs along the outer face of the mountain.

Close up, the pollen on the lake surface looks like an impressionist painting of night sky.

The crater is also home to many squirrely friends.

Looking up the cliff face, from the bottom of the trail.

A close look at the pollen in the lake.

The first of two tour-boats active on the lake.

Our tour guide, pausing between comments over the loudspeaker.

The inside wall of the crater is home to some bizarre geography.

This brutal terrain would make a good cover for a Metal album.

The water is shockingly blue and clear. The guide says it’s the clearest water on the entire continent.

The walls can be very sheer, unlike other lakes that have been eroded by strong current or big changes in the surface level.

The layers are a geologist’s dream – or nightmare.

The clouds seem too low, because the altitude of the lake is abnormally high. The water is uniquely clear and still, and reflects the clouds strangely.

This is Ghost Ship Island, the smaller of the two islands in Crater Lake. It’s made of some very odd rock.

Here’s the island from another angle.

The silhouette of this island is quite remarkable.

See that dark blue edge on the water there, between the foreground and the background, starting at the corner of the island? There’s a cliff under the water there. The lake is much deeper beyond the cliff, so you can see more water below, and more reflected sunlight.

That formation on the right is called the “Pumice Castle” by the tourguides. I’d love to climb down to it, but the route would probably be very difficult. I can’t help imagining that there’s a door in it leading to some kind of medieval theme park.