Day 138: Craters and lakes

The short title of one of our hiking guide books is called "109 Walks" and as expected it mostly contains a series of gentle outings with flat, easy trails. Mixed in for good measure are a few trips that could qualify as hikes involving rougher trails and some elevation gain. We'd eyed up today's trip in the past as one of many to do "sometime", and today "sometime" arrived.

The main attraction of this hike was the old volcanic crater which the trail circumnavigates - sounds exciting, doesn't it? While not on the scale of Oregon's Crater Lake, I have to say I was really impressed with what we saw. The trail really does follow the rim of a volcanic crater with steep drops either side and several good viewpoints, despite being forested. And fortunately it's really pleasant forest too - open dry woodland, the ground carpeted with moss and dotted with bright pink coralroot plants. Before we did this hike I imagined dark, gloomy second-growth fir and cedar.

Today's photo shows one of the views of the central lake, surrounding by crumbling columnar basalt cliffs. The lake is called "Logger's Lake", which to my mind conjures up somewhere I'd rather not visit. I think more people would know of this and visit it if it were called the more appropriate "Crater Lake". Mind you, plenty of people did seem to know of it, and it looks like a good swimming lake, so maybe it's just another one of those open secret destinations.

Logger's Lake