Day Three – Prussian Blue

Crater Lake National Park is just a few minutes from our camp at Diamond Lake. Our first glimpse from the rim of the caldera made one of the lake’s famous attributes undeniable, it is a gorgeous blue color. Later in the day we researched just what color would describe what we saw. Prussian blue was the closest we could come to describing the hue. The early morning sun glittered off the lake’s surface as we gazed in wonder. 

The lake is about six miles in diameter and Wizard Island, off the near shore, is a well-known feature. As we began our day exploring this National Park, we wondered what else would we learn during our stay.

Why so blue? According to park information, the color is due to two things – depth and cleanliness. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in North America and is said to be the cleanest large body of water in the world! Formed when 12,000-foot Mount Mazama erupted 7,700 years ago, the crater eventually filled with water that is only precipitation and runoff from snow melt. Therefore, no sediment from river runoff to “dirty up” the lake. In addition, the depth of the lake absorbs the red, yellow, and green light spectrum from sunlight leaving only the blue light waves to return to the surface as a brilliant blue.

There are two islands in Crater Lake. Wizard Island, the most well-known island, is actually a cinder cone that erupted until it eventually broke the surface of the lake and kept growing. The second island is actually a peak formed of the oldest exposed rock in the caldera. This island, called the Phantom Ship, is made of erosion resistant lava that is about 400,000 years old. The jagged edges of the island give the illusion of a ship’s sails



A side trip which was an after thought, turned out to be a very interesting part of our day in the park. We headed out to see The Pinnacles without knowing what we’d find. 

These fossilized fumaroles formed when hot ash from the erupting Mt. Mazama filled a river valley. As the ash cooled, it released steam which vented to the surface. In the process, the combination of minerals in the ash and its heat created very hard material. Erosion of the softer ash over the next 7,000+ years left behind these stone spires along the whole river canyon. It was intriguing to wander along the trail and see more and more of these jagged pinnacles. 





W hat a unique set of geologic events left behind this national treasure we call Crater Lake!



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