What Color is Blue?

We pulled to the rim of Crater Lake in Oregon today, reported to be the bluest lake in the world. But for the We pulled to the rim of Crater Lake today, reported to be the bluest lake in the world. But for the richness of color before me "blue" didn't seem a deep enough word. But, I've been tricked before by my Revo polarizing sunglasses so I reached to remove them. Only I wasn't wearing them. Crater Lake really is that blue.

To add to its credentials, Crater Lake is also the clearest, the coldest and the deepest in the USA. At its deepest point it is 1932 feet, at its widest 6.02 miles. The lake sits 1000 feet inside the collapsed rim of what was once the 12,000 foot Mt. Mazama. The last eruption, 7700 years ago, created this enormous caldera.

The peak of Mt. Garfield sits on one edge of the lake. "At 8060 feet", the guide map said, "it affords excellent views." That was incentive enough. Indeed along the dusty switchback trail there were expansive views of Wizard Island (the former volcanic cone) rising 740 feet above the lakes surface, and of Phantom Ship, a cone from an eruption over half a million years ago, now the oldest rock in the lake.

Going in the opposite direction, the Cleetwood Cove trail took us 700 feet down to the water's edge. An equally impressive sight. From the surface, as well as from above, Crater Lake definitely does defy the word "blue".