CHAPTER VIII

Up to the Rim of Crater Lake at Last, Through the Snow-drifts

Everybody was out at 4:30 the next morning. The hot weather still held. In fact, it was hotter than the day before. Bennie waited till he was on the extreme edge of camp, with a clear field to run in, and then remarked, “It’s the climate.”

But everybody was too busy packing to chase him.

At seven o’clock the cars were ready, and the start was at last made on the last lap for Crater Lake.

“It’s only eighty miles—even a bit less from here, I guess. But it’s up-hill all the way, and of course we don’t know what kind of roads we’re going to get into.”

For many miles they ran along past scattered ranches where the irrigation ditches paralleled the road, and the alfalfa scented the air. Then the country began to get rougher, the road began to climb, the tumbling, foaming green river dropped farther and farther below them into a wild ravine, while they climbed along the side.

“This is something like!” Bennie shouted. “Bring on some more of your old wilderness!”

“You’ll get some more pretty soon now.”

They passed a little settlement, where both cars stopped for gas and to let the engines cool, and then the road ran into a forest, and traveled straight as an arrow, making a long aisle as far as the eye could see.

“Government forest,” the doctor said. “This is a government road. Well, boys, what do you think of these trees?”

The boys looked on either side of the dusty white road, into stands of Douglas fir that almost took their breath away—great giants six and eight feet through, and rising without any branches for a hundred feet or more, straight as masts, and after the first branches going on up another fifty or a hundred feet.

“Some shrubs,” said Bennie.

“You’ll see a lot of bigger ones before we get back to Portland,” said the doctor.

After running for ten miles or so through the forest, while the car and their faces became covered with the white pumice dust, they came suddenly on a beautiful, cold little stream, and beside this stream an open camp ground, maintained by the government for anybody who wanted to use it. Here they stopped for early lunch, under the cool shadows of the great trees.

There were at least a dozen other cars there, and half as many tents were pitched in the woods. Fires were going. Some campers had wash hung out to dry. The camp was clean and well cared for.

“Well,” said Spider, looking around, “all I can say is that Massachusetts has got something to learn from Oregon. If you tried to camp anywhere at home, you’d get chased off. And when the State does get any land for a forest, it doesn’t make any provisions for camping. They won’t let you build a fire. Can’t camp without a fire.”

“Here’s something for you scouts to think about,” Mr. Stone said. “Why don’t you talk up State forests and camp sites when you go home? The Boy Scouts could do a lot if they all got together.”

“You bet we’ll think about it,” Spider said. “Why, there’s a State reservation right near Southmead, and a nice park on it, and the State hasn’t even made a path around the pond so you can get to the water.”

“People in the East haven’t learned how to camp yet, anyway,” the doctor said. “They think they’ve got to have a hotel every fifty miles.”

“Sure,” said Bennie. “Ma’s idea of roughing it is to have hot and cold water and steam heat.”

After lunch they pushed on, and soon began to climb again, up and up, while the radiators boiled in the heat, till they came to the entrance of the Crater Lake National Park, where they stopped to pay the tolls on the cars, and have a tag pasted on the wind-shield. While this was being done, the boys crossed the road and looked down into a tremendous gorge cut by Castle Creek into the lava rock. It was their first real taste of what was ahead. Soon after this, as the road kept on climbing, they began to get glimpses through the trees of mountain tops, covered with snow, and before long the road began to get muddy in places, as if the snow had but recently melted from it.

At last they reached Government Camp, where the Park superintendent and the rangers live, at the foot of the last slope to the rim. Here there were great patches of snow all about in the woods, and trickles of water beside the road.

“Can we get up to the rim?” the doctor called to someone in a doorway.

“Half a dozen cars have gone up, and haven’t come back,” a voice answered.

“Maybe they can’t get back,” the doctor laughed.

“Maybe,” said the other man. “But I reckon they got through. Better put on your chains, though.”

After the chains were put on both cars, they started out once more, on the last pull to the lake.

“Only three or four miles now,” said Uncle Billy, “and a thousand feet to climb.”

The road was muddy, but well graded, as it wound up the ravine, through heavy timber, with great drifts of snow on either side. Before long they came to places where the drifts had been shoveled out to let the road through, and in these places the road was so soft that everybody but the drivers got out and walked. The boys made snowballs and pelted each other. Once or twice the cars stuck, and they had to get boughs to put under the wheels. But there was no serious delay till they were almost at the top of the climb. Here they found several cars stalled ahead of them. Going forward, they found that one big drift was still in the way. Part of it was cut through, but the last end was still ten feet of solid snow. The rangers were even now laying a train of TNT through it, and connecting the fuses. The boys rushed back for their cameras.

When the dozen charges were ready, everybody ran out of the way. A ranger connected the wires, and went back behind a tree to the battery. A moment later there was a terrific explosion, and a huge geyser of black smoke and black water rose from the drift, the blackened water settling down in a fine, dirty mist on the snow to leeward.

“Gosh, I hope I snapped that at the right time!” said Bennie. “Made me jump so, I couldn’t tell.”

Mr. Stone, who was working with a graflex, said he thought he got a good one, anyway. Then they went forward and found the twelve charges had blasted out a deep ditch in the snow right through the drift. Men sprang in with shovels, and in fifteen minutes the cars could plough through. From there on the snow was melted from the road, and flowers were already coming up through the soft brown pumice soil.

Right ahead of them the boys saw the hotel, and in front of the hotel the land seemed to disappear. It didn’t look at all like a mountain here. The road was now quite level, and there were woods all about. Only to the right there was a mountain peak, close by, covered with a great cap of snow. It looked more as if they were coming to the edge of some cañon.

“Where’s the lake?” they demanded.

“Can you stand it for two minutes more?” the doctor asked.

Now the car was close to the hotel. The boys jumped out and ran ahead, up a little grade. And then they stopped stone dead, and drew in a long breath of astonishment.

Right under their feet the land fell away at so sharp an angle that it was practically a precipice, for more than a thousand feet. This great precipice stretched out to right and left, rising here and there into crags and cliffs a thousand feet above them, and swung around in a vast circle six miles in diameter, thus making what looked like a gigantic hole in the earth. At the bottom of this hole lay the lake; but it was not an ordinary lake. It was not just water. In fact, it didn’t look like water. It was a wonderful, a vivid, an unbelievable blue. It was bluer than the sky.

“It’s the bluest thing I ever saw!” cried Bennie. “Wow! how do you get down to it?”

“There’s just one trail down here,” his uncle answered, “and one around on the east side. Those are the only two ways down to the water.”

“And what’s that little peaked island out there?” Spider asked, pointing to what looked like a pile of cinders at one side of the lake, cinders covered with green weeds.

“That’s Wizard Island. After this old volcano collapsed into the crater, and before it filled with water, she started up again to build a new volcano. That island is the result. It’s a little volcano all by itself, with a crater in the top. That island is 800 feet above the water line, and the green you see on it is made by big trees.”

“Gosh!” said Bennie. “It looks about eight feet high, instead of 800. Can we get to it?”

“We’ll get to it, all right. But we’ve got to make camp before we do anything.”

“Will you tell us after supper all about this lake, how it got made and everything?” Spider asked. “Gee, I wish I’d studied geology.”

“You’ve come to the right place to begin,” said the doctor. “But now for a camp site. Come on with me.”

Leaving the cars, they walked westward along the rim, looking for a chance to get the cars through the drifts. They could manage, they found, to run them a few hundred feet west of the hotel, along what looked like a road. There was a considerable open space between the edge of the rim and the timber, however, and to get back from the rim to the trees they had to get the camp spades out of the cars and dig a ditch through two feet of snow. At last the cars were through, and a comparatively dry spot found under some big fir trees. Here the tents were put up, with the stove between them, the cars unpacked, the beds inflated, and Dumplin’ and Bennie went after wood while Spider took the pails and went back over the snow toward the hotel for water. All the water has to be pumped up to the hotel and the camp grounds from a spring back down the road. When he returned, he reported that already a dozen more cars had arrived, several tents were going up, and there were a lot of people at the hotel.

Meanwhile Bennie and Dumplin’ had discovered that past campers had cleaned out so much of the dead wood that it was hard to find enough for a fire, especially as the woods were still full of snow and the fallen branches buried or else soaking wet. However, they rustled up enough for that night and breakfast, and preparations for supper began.

As the sun got lower and lower, the water of the lake seemed to turn a darker and darker blue, and the snow cap on Garfield, the peak just to the east, turned a lovely rose red—and Bennie put on his coat.

“What you putting that on for?” his uncle asked.

“It’s the climate,” said Bennie, with a grin.

“Well, suppose you and Dump go drain the radiators before we forget it,” the doctor laughed.

“What do you mean, drain the radiators? Are you kidding?” the boys demanded.

“Kidding? Not on your life. Go do as I tell you.”

“But, gee whiz, they were _boiling_ about three hours ago,” Dumplin’ said.

“That was three hours ago, and 2,000 feet lower. Go do as I tell you.”

“Some climate, I’ll say!” Bennie laughed. But he was still skeptical, it was plain to see. He thought his uncle was trying to play a joke on him. However, he and Dumplin’ drained the cars.

A few minutes later they heard the welcome call from the camp, “Come and get it!”