The Mountain That Fell Into Itself
It was still twilight when dinner was over, and the doctor said, “First
class in geology will now be held on Victory Rock. Do you scouts have
merit badges in geology, by the way?”
“No,” said Spider.
“That’s funny. Seems to me you ought to,” Mr. Stone declared. “Scouts
are hiking around the country all the time, and it’s a mighty good
chance to see how the earth was made.”
Victory Rock, the boys found, is a kind of bowsprit of lava thrust out
from the rim, so that when you stand on it you can see almost all the
circle of the lake, and the water appears to be directly under you.
“Now, take a good look,” Uncle Billy said, “and then try to imagine what
this place was like before the big explosion. The rim here is 7,000 feet
above sea level. In other words, we’ve climbed up, to get here, about
half the height of the original mountain. We are about at snow line.”
“About!” Bennie laughed. “About is good!”
“Now just imagine the line of ascent we took from Government Camp
carried right on up, all around the lake. When the slopes met, over the
middle, in the peak of the original mountain, geologists reckon that
peak was from 14,000 to 15,000 feet high. This was one of the highest
mountains, if not the highest, in the United States proper. It was an
active volcano, of course. If you’ll look over there to the northwest,
you’ll see a big, steep precipice with a rounded top. That’s called Llao
Rock. Do you see how the bottom of it curves up at either end? Well,
that curve shows you where the bottom of a ravine was on the original
mountain. In some eruption, ages ago, a great stream of lava flowed down
that ravine, filled it up to overflowing, and hardened into rock. If you
travel around the lake, you can pick out where each ravine was by the
laval cliffs.”
“How high is that Llao Rock?” asked Spider.
“About 2,000 feet from the water.”
“Gee, then that lava stream was more’n a thousand feet deep!”
“It was,” said the doctor. “Much more.”
“And then what happened?” Bennie asked.
“Well, I wasn’t here at the time,” said Uncle Billy, “but as near as the
scientists can figure it out, there must have been a tremendous
eruption, scattering pumice all over Oregon and making a lot of our rich
soil, and then, at the level where we are now, probably a lot of vent
holes blew out, making the whole top of the mountain, which was only a
shell around the great crater hole, so insecure that it just toppled
inward of its own weight. About seven or eight thousand feet of the
mountain just collapsed into the crater.”
“Say, I’d like to have been here with the old kodak!” Bennie cried. “And
then what happened?”
“Well, then the bottom of the crater evidently started to spit again,
and build up a new mountain. It built up a perfect cone, just the shape
of the old mountain, almost to the level of the rim. That’s Wizard
Island out there. Wizard Island is a later kind of lava and volcanic
stuff than what you find in the rim walls. But the old mountain got
tired about then, and decided to call it a day, and it’s been resting
ever since.”
“But how did the water get here?” Dumplin’ asked.
“Out of the sky. There are no springs, so far as anybody knows, in the
crater. That water has just come from the snow and rain—mostly snow,
which has been falling into the hole for untold ages. Over on the east
side of the lake, it is 2,000 feet deep.”
“Say, you could almost dive there without hitting your head on bottom,
couldn’t you?” Bennie laughed. “What makes it so blue?”
“Nobody seems to know that. Some people think there must be some
chemical or mineral gets into it. Anyway, there’s no other lake in the
world which has its color.”
“I’ll bet there isn’t!” Spider declared. “My, it’s a beautiful thing.
When are we going down to it? Are there boats on it? How do they get the
boats down there?”
“One at a time!” Mr. Stone laughed. “We’ll go down as soon as the trail
is opened. They get the boats down the trail on wheels, by man power,
and keep ’em winters over on Wizard Island. You could see the boat-house
if it wasn’t so dark.”
“Let’s go over to the hotel and find out if the trail is open yet!” the
boys cried, and led the way without waiting for an answer.
No, the trail wasn’t open, the hotel manager told them. But the boatmen
had been down and got some rowboats out, and two men had gone down
fishing that afternoon.
“But it’s not a safe trip,” the manager added. “We don’t advise anybody
to try it. The government is going to begin shoveling the snow out of
the trail tomorrow morning. You’d better wait a day or two.”
They thanked him, bought some souvenir post-cards to send home, and went
back to camp.
“Have we got to wait?” the boys demanded.
The two men only smiled.
“Better be up early,” they said. “We might have a try at it. Can’t tell.
Bennie seems to want a bit of real wild stuff. Maybe we can give it to
him.”
There was not wood enough in camp to make a camp fire, and no chance to
get any more till daylight. Everybody had put on his sweater, and the
air was getting colder and colder.
“Nothing for it but to go to bed,” Mr. Stone declared. “And be thankful
you have those blankets you didn’t need at Rogue River.”
“It’s the climate!” said Bennie, as he shivered in his pyjamas and
wriggled hastily in between all the blankets he could stuff into his
sleeping bag. “Oh, you blankets!”
“And down in Medford, eighty miles away, they’re probably kicking off
the sheets,” laughed Uncle Billy. “What do you think of Crater Lake now,
eh?”
But Bennie only grunted. He was already half asleep.