With little to no wind around until early afternoon, it gave the perfect opportunity to shoot some of the reflections of the crater walls in the surface of the lakes water.
Until Friday a good chunk of the East rim road was still closed due to snow coverage, thankfully they finally opened it up on Friday as it makes getting from one place to another so much easier when you have two options to drive around the crater instead of just one.
From several places on the North side of Crater Lake there are great views of some of the other mountains in the Cascade range.
Here we have Mount Thielsen.
Here we have Mount Bailey and Mount Thielsen from left to right.
It's not only the North side of Crater Lake National Park that offers great views of some of the other mountains in the Cascade range.
Here we have Swan Lake Mountain which is located to the South East of Crater Lake.
The only main road which is still closed inside the park is the one which delivers you to the top of Cloudcap Overlook, and even though the rest of the roads are clear, you can quickly see just how much snow covers the road up to Cloudcap at the moment.
Also, meet my trusty steed for this current trip, a Ford Fiesta - for our Euro viewers, yes it does have a boot/trunk too...I thought it was a Focus when I picked it up until I realised it was just a "little" bit smaller.
I don't think I could have picked a better day as far as the weather goes, not a cloud in the sky from start to finish and just nice toasty hot temperature without getting unconfortable.
The scenery around the lake is just stunning and it's easy to fire off hundreds of shots as you circle the lake itself, and honestly having been there later in the season last year I would advise going right now when there is still snow around, as it adds so much more to the end results.
It may look like "just another" reflection shot, but look a little closer and you will see the Phantom Ship sitting bang in the middle of the reflection of the crater wall behind.
If like me you do homework on places to shoot from in advance of visiting, then you would probably be a little dissapointed if you got to the Phantom Ship overlook and only had a short range lens in tow.
As you can see there are a lot of trees at this overlook, so you really need to shoot the small island known as Phantom Ship from between any pair of trees to get a nice, clean shot. For the previous shot I fired from between the left and 2nd from left trees.
From the main visitor centre known as Rim Village, there are some great places to view the lake, and most of it's smaller details, in this case Wizard Island.
Time for another reflection shot, this time of Wizard Island from the South West, shooting from a spot just a few hundred yards North of Rim Village.
The main question that people ask after seeing photographs from Crater Lake is just what kind of filter or post processing has been done to make the water such a vivid blue colour.
The honest answer is none, that's what makes this place so special, not only are you standing on the rim of a huge volcano crater, but the lake that it holds inside is the most amazing colour of blue ever.
Hopefully the above shot will help show you it in more detail than the other pics...
While most of the main stopping spots around the lake have at least a bit of area cleared to make viewing and shooting the lake as simple as possible, in the most part the crater rim is lined with trees, so getting a completely unobstructed shot of the whole spectacle can be tricky for some.
Thankfully from the Rim Village you can take the short walk to the South where the Sinsott Memorial Overlook is located. From the Overlook you have a clear, unobstructed view out over the lake.
Shot from a short distance into the Garfield Peak trail looking back North towards Rim Village.
There are tour boats which run frequently from the Cleetwood Trail area on the North West of the caldera, and if you look close enough you'll see two of them having just left Wizard Island.
One is heading back towards the dock at Cleetwood and the other is heading off in the direction of the Phantom Ship.
As I made my way through the snow covered fields towards where the Garfield Peak trail starts to rise in elevation I caught the sight of something moving out the corner of my eye.
The deer seemed to have done the exact same thing and I can only assume he/she stood there wondering why someone (me) was crazy enough to be ploughing through the snow covered field in only a pair of shorts and a t-shirt :D
Even thought at this stage I had only ascended around 200-300 of the 970 feet climb up to Garfield Peak, the view out over some of the other mountains in the Cascade Range just had to be soaked in and captured.
The main peaks are Mount Bailey (back left) and Mount Thielsen (right).
This is the uppper section of the Garfield Peak trail which you access from the South side of Rim Village. It is described as difficult in most of the guides you will find, it's not as difficult as many other trails BUT it is unforgiving in it's continued angle of ascent.
The higher you get the narrower the path becomes and as you can see here the drop off to othe side is quite steep at certain points.
If you look to where the snow is there's a sign to warn of the dangers that lie in that huge pile of snow.
Lets just say that the word "avalanche" had been successfully expunged from my vocabulary before I tip-toe'd on past.
Just before reaching Garfield Peak, the elevation gave a great vantage point from which to shoot back towards Rim Village which sits to the South West of the crater.
There are still two more blog entries to come from my trip to Crater Lake, the 4th will be the remaining daytime shots and the 5th will be of the awesome sunset to round off one phenomenal daytrip...
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