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Crater Lake sits in the caldera of the collapsed Mount Mazuma. It is the deepest lake in the US at nearly 2000 ft. Under the surface are several volcanic domes and cinder cones. Only one cinder cone rises above the surface, Wizard Island, near the western shore. I first became aware of Crater Lake nearly twenty years ago when it was featured on a cover of an outdoor photography magazine. The young photographer who made that image of the lake in full winter dress, and would later become quite well known, described an arduous journey through deep snow. I imagined something like a miles long trek through the Yukon and gave up on the idea of ever seeing it like that.
What I didn’t know then was that the National Park Service plows the road up the mountain and partly around the lake through the winter. When we arrived in early spring, the snow was still knee deep away from the road, but the road surface was bare. From where the plowing ended, it was only a short walk through the snow to a view of Wizard Island. Had I come with snow shoes, I could easily have reached the view featured on the magazine cover.
I tried a number of compositions including panoramas before I found a tree snag and thought it would serve as a nice foreground element. No ND filters were needed to smooth the surface nor were reflections possible since it was quite windy. Even though the sky was mostly cloudy, the deep blue color of the lake was very apparent. I returned the next morning to capture the sunrise through some wild snow fog, but could only include a bit of Wizard Island in the frame.
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