Rudy Mancke: Oregon's Crater Lake National Park provides a view of a collapsed volcano and lets us sample plant and animal communities from the lowlands to the rim of the crater... Next on Nature Scene.

A production of: Nature Scene is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you members of the Etv Endowment of South Carolina.

♪ Gentle Guitar Music ♪ [captioning sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education] ♪ Gentle Guitar Music ♪ Hello, and welcome to Nature Scene at Crater Lake National Park in South Central Oregon.

I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke and we're at one of the most beautiful parks in the world but we're beginning our visit here in a Ponderosa Pine Forest way below the level of the lake.

I think when you think about Crater Lake you zero in on the lake-- and certainly that's absolutely glorious, and we'll see that-- but this is a bigger picture than that.

We're going to start low-- about 5,000 feet or so-- and work our way up to the rim of the crater talking a little bit about volcanoes-- this is one of the cascade volcanoes.

It blew its top a few thousand years ago and we're going to see how that affected plants and animals that are even, you know, living here today.

Starting at the level where one tree dominates and really, you can see it around us here-- good old Ponderosa Pine-- sometimes called kind of a yellow belly pine.

You can take a good look at that.

It's all up overhead, right in front of us.

Well, people coming through the south entrance to the park will see these great ponderosa trees there... 100 to 200 feet tall and cinnamon-colored bark on them.

( chuckling ): yeah.

It's neat.

Needles in bundles of three.

All the pines have leaves grouped together.

And that's really second only to douglas fir in lumber production, uh, in the united states.

You know what I love, Rudy?

When you put your nose up to it and smell it has that vanilla smell to it.

It does smell a little like vanilla.

These trees are not shade-tolerant, though.

I think you can look all around us here among and underneath the Ponderosa Pines you see the little firs coming up popping up all over the place.

They are shade-tolerant so they will eventually-- unless man puts his hand in this-- actually get up and shade out the Ponderosa Pines that are overhead.

Rudy, what's the understory shrub all around us here?

"snowbrush," Jim, is one of the common names for it.

Snowy-white flowers on it this time of year, as you can see.

The leaves are opposite and really shiny...

Uh, really, really shiny.

And as you see, like you said, it dominates and look what it does-- it attracts insects galore coming to get nectar and pollen from those flowers.

And when you have the insects the predator/prey relationship.

There's the dragonfly waiting for a meal.

There is a larger insect that's not here for nectar, not here for pollen.

It's picking off insects that are coming to get nectar and pollen.

You can see he flies up, grabs something, comes down and chews it up and changes it into dragonfly.

One insect changing into another one.

Isn't that amazing?

What kind of a dragonfly is it, Rudy?

The old name for it was the "ten-spot dragonfly."

now it's referred to as the "twelve-spot skimmer."

I guess it depends on who's counting.

And look at the showy, red little delicate flower down here.

I love that.

Trumpet-shaped flower.

"skyrocket" is one of the common names for it.

Some people consider that one of the gilias-- some other people put it in other categories-- but it is beautiful.

Dry places like this, absolutely perfect for it.

We'll see many birds here, too and there's a blackbird on the bank there.

And that's the common one in this part of the United States.

Very dark with light-colored eye.

"brewer's blackbird" is the common name.

You see it in open places, in closed places and that even does well around a lot of people.

Well, it's mid-July here in the park-- mid-summer for Crater Lake-- and I know much of the east rim is closed to snow but there's still lots to see.

Absolutely.

Let's get started.

There are about 180,000 acres in the park and about five square miles of pumice desert.

We're walking over about 50 feet of pumice right now... Pumice that came from the ancestral mountain, Mount Mazama.

It's interesting, you know, we said a moment ago that we're going to be looking at signs of volcanic activity and this pumice desert is certainly a good sign of that.

Also, from here you can see what's called "Red Cones" sticking up above everything else.

That's a nice cinder cone.

Look at that reddish look to it.

20,000-, 30,000- year-old cone... And a little bit of snow on there, so... Well, it's mid-summer here but snow exists around the rim up there for a long time.

Volcanic activity-- signs of it-- all over the place.

And then, really, a nice view ahead of us of the edge of the rim we'll slowly but surely work our way up there.

That's Hillman Peak one of the higher points around the crater itself and named for John Wesley Hillman a prospector who discovered the lake in 1853.

Native Americans had been here but when Hillman saw it, he said it's deep-blue lake.

That's all I can think of.

We'll find out later.

Yeah, that's a neat view from here.

All around us now, you can see that material that really came down the slopes of the volcano as something called a "Glowing Avalanche."

"Glowing," because it was hot-- hot gases and puffed lava, really, is what this is.

Pumice is interesting material.

Let me get a little piece.

So it went a long way from Mazama itself.

Oh, yeah.

Just...

It's so lightweight.

I mean, you can toss it up very easily and some of this is so lightweight that you can actually get it to float on, uh, on water.

This was once solid lava but it had a little bit of water in it which became steam, puffed it up and then this thing flowed down into position.

And low in nutrients so any plants that come in here are going to have a rough time.

Well, a desert, you don't usually think of... Not many plants can survive and yet there are a few species that really dominate here.

The one that's most obvious is the one with the big leaves and "Newberry Knotweed" is one of the common names for that.

Uh, named after a, uh, a surgeon naturalist that came with the army out here in the 1850s.

But you see the large leaves and tiny little flowers typical of that group of plants.

A few others sticking up here and there and they exist, again, on low moisture as well.

Yeah.

Look at the Sandwort.

This is a good common name for that one because the common name is "Pumice Sandwort."

many varieties of Sandwort.

This one is typical of the pumice desert.

And then, I also see one of the parsleys.

Sometimes that whole group-- and there are a number of them-- are called "Desert Parsleys" and you can see flowers and fruit on it.

Leaves close to the ground.

Again, you don't want to lose too much moisture because you don't get to gather very much moisture here.

A few trees starting to invade, Rudy.

What are these?

These are lodgepole pines that are just beginning to come out.

Slowly but surely, the soils change and the climate may change a little and they'll be really producing a forest here probably.

And that's really what we want to look at next-- lodgepole pine forest.

We're right next to the Pacific Crest Trail here, Rudy that runs 2,600 miles from Mexico all the way to Canada.

33 miles of it pass through the park here.

And walking through small-- here-- Lodgepole Pines.

That is a dominant plant, as we mentioned in this part of the United States.

Well, it covers about 40% of the national park and has to put up with about 50 feet of snow.

Yeah, and there's a little bit... You know, you can see little patches of snow scattered around here and there but there used to be a lot more snow here-- enough, really, to cover these small trees.

Look over to the side there.

You can see the angle of those trees.

Bent the young ones over.

Absolutely.

And again, these plants these young ones are flexible enough to put up with that or they would not be able to survive here.

So snow is a factor as well as this pumice-rich soil you know, that doesn't have a whole lot of nutrients in it.

You tell them by their size and look?

Yeah, and two needles per bundle if you get a close look at them.

I see these young ones all around us here with new growth.

Look at the new growth right on the tip, see?

So they survived the winter and are starting growing again and the growing season here is rather short.

My grandmother used to call those "candles" on the pines.

And then over here, on a larger tree I see male cones.

And if you were to tap those with your finger pollen would come out of those male cones and then, of course, female cones there that used to have fruit in it.

Those are old ones.

The bird up here in the tree.

Flicker right there.

Northern Flicker right there-- no doubt about it.

Sometimes... Used to be called the "Red-Shafted Flicker"-- neat bird.

Very clearly a, a woodpecker.

No doubt about that.

And then on the ground over here very common-- everybody knows, you know, the American Robin.

Widespread species, doing nicely here, too.

These lodgepole pines are interesting.

They can be skinny; they can be big; they...

They roll with the punches so to speak, and I think that's why they're so widespread.

Let's keep going.

The park dates back to 1902 and there's so many roads and lookouts throughout the park to let you enjoy the work of Mount Mazama which exploded with 100 times greater force than Mount Saint Helens.

This is probably part of that.

Well, yeah, there's no doubt about that and what a beautiful view here because of the work of water, uh, after the fact.

Look at the waterfall in the distance over there.

Carving away the rock.

Slowly but surely, going through these volcanic deposits and making a really nice valley and as you come down look at that beautiful, wet meadow down there.

And the spire shapes on those trees must be sub-alpine firs with the wetter region down there.

I think it's interesting from here since the creek's done the work to see at least three different layers of volcanic deposits.

See that?

Real thick layer of gray at the bottom and then brown, then gray again at the top.

That material must have been laid down then steam... And other gasses coming up from below actually stuck together-- fused some of the volcanic debris-- forming something that was harder than all the material around it.

So it eroded and left pinnacles.

Absolutely.

Differential weathering ends up giving you spires like that in a situation like this.

Really, the work of the creek is what's made it so obvious.

Beautiful setting, Rudy and look at the small birds down here.

Now, they've got just a few months to raise a brood this summer.

Yeah, those are Pine Siskins.

Sharp, pointed little beak and lots of streaks on the birds.

Male and female look a lot alike.

A little bit more yellow on the male.

But that is a neat animal right there in front of us not even minding the fact that we're standing here looking.

There are so many beautiful views here already and we're not even at the top yet.

There are 90 miles of trails throughout crater lake national park.

This is the godfrey glen trail and it takes us through another grove of conifers.

Yeah.

This is really dominated by, uh, Mountain Hemlock and one of the firs.

It looks like, really, sub-alpine fir in here, Jim.

They get to be fairly large.

So many conifers, it is truly conifer land.

Yeah.

And really, it's easy to tell the difference between the two if you look at the leaves.

The Mountain Hemlock right here with leaves coming off all around that stem.

You see that right in front of us there on the small one?

See the... Look in there-- to be quite flexible to bend with the snow, I guess.

Yeah.

And then, these tall ones in here looks like sub-alpine fir to me.

All the needles are coming out on the side of the branch and curving up instead of coming out all around t branch.

The firs have cones that stick straight up and fall apart, so you can't really look at that but here's one of the, uh, cones... Of the, uh, Mountain Hemlock and we can take a close look at it.

It's small cone compared to the pine cones that we're used to seeing.

Yeah, and the pines, you know would have little spines on the, uh... On the ends of those scales.

There's no spines on this one.

And this Mountain Hemlock has such a big cone, though compared to the other Hemlocks.

Western Hemlock or eastern Hemlock would have a cone about, oh, one-fifth or less the size of this one and you can see those scales are wide open and all the seed have been shed.

Small cones, Rudy, but the Mountain Hemlock is a big tree.

Oh, absolutely.

There are a lot of big ones all around us.

Movement right here.

Oh, the flash of blue.

The conifer right there.

Steller's Jay.

Lot of gray on that, too up toward the front, and that big crest very, very obvious for that species here looking for a meal, I guess.

There are good scavengers at all levels in this, uh...

In this National Park.

These Hemlocks love a little extra moisture.

There's a waterfall nearby.

Let's take a look at that next.

The rim drive takes you 33 miles around the old volcano and gives you opportunity to see many good things including water cascading.

This one-- over 100 feet down the, uh, old lava.

That is amazing, isn't it?

Really, snow melt, I guess is what's responsible for most of this.

Maybe there's a spring associated with it, too but you can see the difference the water makes, Jim.

Look at all the greenery right along the slot, there and slowly but surely wearing away this volcanic rock even though it's, you know, very, very hard.

That's interesting.

And look at the plants that come in.

You know that one.

This is, uh, Elderberry here in front of us, right?

Yeah, Pacific Red Elderberry... Clusters of flowers on it and, then, it'll have red fruit a little bit later... Leaves that are compound and opposite.

Boy, that-that little, uh, shrub always loves to grow in places that have a little extra moisture and that's a dead giveaway that there's more moisture here.

Well, that's a widespread plant but what about some of these others?

They, uh... Thers perhaps, what, a lupine over here.

It's one of the lupines coming up but quite a few varieties here some very tall, some rather short.

Uh, you can see those typical leaves on it and, then, the pea-shaped flowers.

It's a member of the pea family but very widespread, uh, in the park.

Stickseed is here, too, with the bluish flowers on it.

That's kind of an amazing plant.

Looks a little bit like forget-me-not but the seed would have spine sticks on them so, "stickseed" is the common name.

You see there are clumps of them scattered all around and, then, every time I think of spring I think of spring beauty and that is western spring beauty with flowers on after the snow goes away and things warm up a little and it comes up and pops.

And even though this is mid-July it is spring here in the Cascades.

Look at the Casin's Finches.

Oh, yeah.

See him right here?

Streaked a lot.

Big beak on that bird and, then, the male has that red on the top.

Casin's Finches.

( chuckling ): My goodness, that's a neat animal and typical, now, of the park you find them pretty widespread often associating with people.

This land was shaped by fire and ice.

Let's head up to the rim and see the lake itself.

All right.

We're well over 7,000 feet now, on the rim trail and, yet, once upon a time we would've had a long way to go to get to the summit of that Ancestral Mountain, Mount Mazama.

Yeah, i-it's an amazing story when you think about what happened here and that's why views like this are possible.

I mean, this was a major occurrence-- a large volcano that was much taller here one of the ones that usually gets called a "stratovolcano" or a "composite volcano" made of many layers of flow and, then, about 7,700 years ago or so magma came up from below and slowly began to erode away or erupt knocking down the sides slowly but surely, slowly but surely...

Hot material coming out, going down the sides... Also going up in the air.

In fact, that ash covered half a million square miles.

It was a great eruption.

Yeah, and, then, finally, there was no more magma no more liquid rock beneath it to support what was above and it collapsed on itself.

It's a caldera, and you can see the circular look of this thing.

Uh, later, of course, filled with water from rain or snow, right?

And, then, after that collapse you see the volcanic activity has continued.

There's Wizard Island right in front of us... Little cinder cone.

And Wizard Island is deceiving because, from this height and distance that island is about a mile across and about 800 feet tall.

Those trees at the base, about 800 years old.

So, it's hard to conceive how big it really is.

Yeah, yeah, this is just...

It's-it's absolutely an unbelievable view and, really, also, you get a chance just to look to the side and see some of that volcanic rock.

A lot of this is Andesite named after the Andes mountains in South America where the same kind of rock occurs and, again, you can have the same kind of volcanic activity there that you do, um, here and, of course, the plants have made a comeback.

And it's probably five or six miles across to the other side at various points.

What...

There's, uh something coming out of the water.

That's lava, I suppose.

"Phantom Ship" is what that's called now because of the shape but, yes, that's a... That's a little bit of a-a lava flow, vertical flow of lava that's harder than material around it and so, as the other material erodes away it sticks out like a sore thumb.

You can see the little tour boat going between it and-and the caldera wall.

That's neat.

Rudy, this is said to be some of the cleanest and purest lake water in the whole world and yet I see something yellow floating on the surface down there.

And that's got to be pollen.

You remember those male cones we saw in the pine trees earlier?

That's a result of a lot of pollen not going to the female cones but ending up in the water.

And, then, mount scott in the distance, there with some snow on it and clouds beginning to, uh, to cover it.

This is an amazing place-- a geological story that's very, very exciting and, you know, really this is the deepest lake in the united states.

1,932 feet at the deepest point and, Rudy, the seventh deepest lake in the world.

What a view.

William Gladstone Steel gave his life and his fortune to insure that crater lake would become a National Park...

Worked long and hard and I think millions of Americans can be thankful for it.

Well, there are so many great views around the edge, here, and this is spectacular.

Wind picking up a little bit.

Oh, my goodness.

Get as close as we can to that blue water in the lake and, then, again Wizard Island sticking up out of the, uh, out of the water.

You know, it would be good to talk about "why is the lake so blue?"

and it does change at times, depending on the sky.

Oh, absolutely, and it's in a sense a reflection of the blue sky-- that's part of it-- but light goes down and this is a very deep lake and you end up with blue coming back to see you out of the spectrum but that is nice, with the cinder cone, there and look at all the snow.

Really, there's a lot of snow still on that side of the, uh, of the crater and really even, a little snow field right below us, here.

That's kind of nice.

And the wind blowing up from the lake up across, uh, actually could be 1,000 feet.

The rim itself is from 500 to 200... To 2,000 feet.

You know, when you look at snow I'm reminded of the fact that there were glaciers here once leaving their signs on this volcano before the top was removed.

You can see a beautiful glacial valley.

Look at that u-shaped valley right across the way.

Cut in half.

Signs of a glacier... Valley glacier that cut it and, then, again, rock was removed from here and put elsewhere and a little bit of the sign of that glacial activity, uh, left.

Gosh, that is a beautiful view and, again, lots of pollen on the water.

Look at the plant right down here that's producing pollen now, too.

Oh, that's beautif... That's the Western Pasqueflower?

Western Pasqueflower...

Blowing in the breeze a little bit.

You can see those interesting leaves.

That is a spectacular plant, commonly seen.

You see it scattered around here along with that... "Spreading Flocks"... Is the common name for this thing or "Alpine Flocks."

we're really kind of in a subalpine zone here.

That's a typical plant.

And, then, the trees all around us here are white bark pine.

That's a special tree because they put up with such winds... Oh, boy.

And such elements and twist in the, uh, in the elements.

Yeah.

Look at thi... Look at the golden mantle ground squirrel down there.

Not a... Not a chipmunk, no, no.

No, no striping on the face.

So, it's not a true chipmunk.

One of the ground squirrels but with the golden shoulders.

So, "Golden Mantle Ground Squirrel," pretty good common name.

Now, that will hibernate during the winter and live out through with a... A very slowed-down lifestyle, for sure.

Look at the Clark's Nutcracker down there, too named after the Clark of Lewis-and-Clark fame and they love to come to the pine cones on white bark pine and eat the-the, uh, the seed.

And spread them around through, uh, dropping seeds and planting them, really.

Yeah.

Look at the big beak on that bird.

One of the scavengers, again taking advantage of opportunities.

So many wonderful views at this place.

Jim: when Hillman, a young miner, first saw this lake in 1853 trying to tell others about it he said the views are too great to describe.

You have to see it for yourself.

Well, I think he was absolutely right.

There's no doubt about it and every angle that we've looked at it from it is amazing and spectacular and, really, it amazes me that this was once an active volcano and, now, we're able to come over to the edge and look at some of the rock that, quite frankly gives us a glimpse of the innards of the earth that's come to the surface.

You can see the layering down there very, very clearly, in the rocks.

This-this cone was built over time with successive lava flows and, then, 7,700 years ago, it was removed and distributed somewhere else, the collapse occurred and, of course, all the plants and animals that were here then were wiped out.

But we've seen today, they're coming back.

We traveled through four different forest types.

You know, it really is amazing the lake is wonderful but the Ponderosa Pines, you know were mighty exciting down low before we even got up this high and the associated plants and animals and, then, the pumice desert was a lot of fun for me-- different soils, not a lot of water but there were plants surviving there.

Lodgepole Pines sneaking in.

Sneaking in, and, then, we got to see a Lodgepole Pine Forest and talk about that plant-- pretty widespread here-- and, then, we got a chance to get even higher up into the, uh, mountain hemlock/fir zone...

Totally different... And, then, finally, the subalpine zone.

I love the mix here.

The geology, though is far and away the most spectacular but it's got all those extras added.

And it's hard to believe that around the turn of the century when this was being talked about as a national park it had to be declared as worthless land, of no value.

Well, folks would argue with that today right here at Crater Lake National Park in South Central Oregon.

You need to see it for yourself.

Thanks for watching and join us again on the next Nature Scene.

[captioning sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education captioned by:The Caption Center WGBH Educational Foundation] Nature Scene is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

Additional funding is provided by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.