Although we were exhausted from our (shorter than it could have been) riverfloat, we attended the amphitheater program by Ranger Dave, his first presentation of the summer. And he did very well. The amphitheater is about a 10-minute walk away at the campground. There is a path through the woods that we sometimes take, but it’s not well-defined, and we exit onto the road in a different location each time. So coming back in the dark (note: with our flashlight) we take the road home.

It is now August. The daylight is starting later, and ending sooner. I take Tom to the “Operations Center” at 6:50 a.m.; the last few days the temperature at that early morning hour has been 36° ! – had to pull out the turtleneck and fleece. Could it be that Crater Lake’s “summer” is basically “July” ?

¬Watchman Fire Tower, from the east side

August 05, 2007 – The morning is cold, but clear and crisp, and it will warm up, so I’m going to hike the Watchman Tower Trail. No need for a flashlight this time; the sun is glorifying the mountainsides, and the sky is a brilliant blue.


The hike up took about 25 minutes. The switchbacks on the west side will slow down a hiker, but the rest stops are just opportunities to view the vistas. (I spotted the Wood River, about 25 miles away, and saw that it continued past our kayak “take out” locale through more flat pasturelands until it emptied into Agency Lake. I don’t think we missed anything by stopping when we did! )

At the top, the fire tower stood imposingly, like an eagle on his nest, with a 360-view that was breathtaking. The entire lake was in view, from Wizard Island to Cleetwood Cove, to Phantom Ship. I even spied (through my binoculars) “The Old Man,” that had drifted into the center of the lake, and was probably too far out for the tour boats to approach today.

Speaking of binoculars, the fire tower housed the biggest mega-pair of binoculars I have ever seen:

I wonder what distance can be seen through these 2 1/2-feet in length spec’s?

Eleven hundred feet below, on the lake, I saw the 10 o’clock tour boat approach; Captain Tom (I found out later) was at the helm – too far away to tell (bet I could see just fine through the mega-binocs!). The passengers disembarked at Wizard Island, and an hour later, hikers at the rim of the Wizard caldera could be seen.

I enjoyed two hours of relative solitude at Watchman Tower. As more hikers began to arrive, I left, but with a hope to find more views as spectacular as the one here. I just can’t seem to

get enough of this lake!