Crater Lake Part I

I've wanted to visit Crater Lake in winter for a few years now. As a matter right before Xmass last year I attempted to do so. I spent two days traveling to Portland and made mad rush up the mountain only to find it snowing and visibility reduced to about 50'. Ugh. So when I was planning out my next trip to Portland for Spring Scoot I asked for 2 more days off so I could try it again. This time around, I had a bit of success (WOO HOO!). Anyway, I made it up to Klamath Falls the night before and found a pretty inexpensive hotel for the night. The next morning at 5am I was on the road to the top. Before leaving I checked the weather forecast and it said sunny and 21 degrees. Hells yes! I was on. I stopped for gas, but forgot about any form of breakfast. Hell I forgot about food (not an easy thing for a fat kid like me too). Anyway, but 6am I was up at the rim and tromping around. The first thing problem I had was the sun hadn't quite come out, so it was a wee bit colder then 21 degrees. 15 minutes out and I was happy go back to the car and get proper gloves as I couldn't feel my own fingers at this point and the sun was finally beginning to see the light of day

for the next 2 hours I headed north west along the rim and snowed in road to get more photo opportunities. After an hour, the M7's meter system started to act wonky as if either the battery was dying or something was going wrong, either way I stopped using it and relied on the m240 and Xpan. My beat Xpan preformed remarkably btw. The H240 developed oil spots across the morning on the sensor. Ugh. Anyway, my first hike was on rather flat road and only some hiking into deeper snow. I ran into two other hikers along the way, one who had hiked out the night before and another who had driven up that night and simply gotten the trail about an hour before me.

After about an hour two I found my stomach rumbling a bit and headed back to the parking lot and hoping to find the restaurant at the lodge open ended in disappointment. Ugh, I did have a 2 bottles of water in the car, so headed back to the parking lot to quench my stomach rumbling. Afterwards I headed the opposite direction towards the south east of the park.

Here I found the snow deeper and somewhat more slushy, I was OK with it, as I had decent clothing on and wasn't too worried about it. I ended up climbing up most of Garfield peak when My stomach started to tell me that fat kid needs to eat. Along the way back I started to feel water making it's way into my left boot, oddly enough at no point did I feel my feet begin to get cold along the way.

Anyway the trip back to the car was fairly easy other then finding my waxed jeans had also soaked threw after all the deeper snow tromping. I changed at the car into shorts and tennis shoes as my hiking time as up. I was also pretty famished and really wanted to get back on the road to get something to eat. This was 11am and to my surprise the lodge had finally opened. I got a few odd looks about the shorts and tennis shoes, but hell my tummmy was happy either way

Anyway, here are some of the digital color shots I took along the way. I of course forgot to shoot any detail shots as I was engrossed on wider scenery. I should have B&W film stuff in the coming week. Enjoy