On Wednesday we had 6 people come out to snowshoe in the glorious weather above the dull grey fog that has been covering the valley. We had a late start due to a miscommunication. We met at Steele Visitor Center, then at 10:45am, we started up the Raven Trail at Crater Lake. We started to follow the trail, but I made an adjustment to go along the road as a previous track had gone. There was just a bit of trail breaking. I think this avoided an area of steep terrain above the trail.

We came to an open area and made our way up to the place where the trail had been well established. I went to the back of the line and let each person lead part of the way up. We made our way through trees with snow covering the bottoms and green tops that had been exposed to the sunshine.

We came to another area with a steep grade above us and could see the pinwheels that had formed in the snow. Pinwheels and rollerballs of snow indicate the snow surface is getting wet and losing strength. As more of these start rolling downhill the danger of wet snow avalanches increases.

We made our way to the top and enjoyed views of Crater Lake, Wizard Island and Mount Thielsen. We took our group photo, then took cover from the wind up next to the lodge for lunch. Linda handed out chocolate for the group.

After lunch, we explored behind the lodge and saw gigantic icicles. A little farther down, we had a view of Mount Scott. We turned around and I had Scott lead the group back down.

When we got to the open area, we decided to stay on the trail and go through the woods. We made it back to our cars and had gone 3 miles and had 523 feet of elevation gain.