Garfield Peak (Crater Lake)

June 27, 2024

2455m

Crater Lake, OR

Garfield Peak on the south rim of Crater Lake is one of the more popular hikes along the rim as it’s right next to the Rim Village and a well-maintained trail goes to the summit. When I thought it would make sense to take Erica up to the rim for a look at the lake I figured we might as well push ourselves to do at least one peak up there. I’ve only been there one time in 2017 and snowshoed up The Watchman, so Garfield Peak would be ideal this time. Earlier in the day we had ascended Mt. Thielsen and then we drove immediately towards the south rim, which should take about an hour and half. Unfortunately the traffic situation was terrible and there was at least an hour of delay at the park’s gate. This did not bother me because the later in the day the better the lighting would be, but Erica needed to get some work done. I eventually suggested her to pull out the laptop while lining up at the gate, and this worked out reasonably well.

We eventually parked the car at the Rim Village as close to Garfield Peak as possible and started the short ascent quickly after. The trail was unfortunately “closed” but nobody’s abiding the rule. We plodded past that closure sign but encountered two rangers not far up the trail. We had some conversation about the conditions and safety in general but they were convinced that we were “well prepared” after seeing our ice axes. They were some nice guys. We resumed the ascent and met a bunch of other hikers on various parts of the trail, and nobody was as “well prepared” as us and I also believed that we were the only party that made the summit in that afternoon. We did encounter some patches of snow and some slopes were decently steep, but with our mountaineering experience it was not a difficult job to just kick our way up in the trail-runners. No technical gear was needed. The views were some of the best we had ever seen. It was impossible to even capture the scale of Crater Lake and the best way is to go there and experience it.

Me scrambling up a rock pinnacle for some photos

The well-engineered trail. Erica was running uphill here…

We encountered some snow but they had shoveled this section through

Erica now ascending onto snow. It was doable in just trail runners

Erica on the summit. Note the island pinnacle

A wider view of Crater Lake’s eastern side from the summit

Mt. McLoughlin would be our next objective

Another photo of Wizard Island with Hillman Peak behind

A closer look at Mt. Thielsen, our previous objective

Erica and I on the summit of Garfield Peak

Erica and I on the summit again, now with matching jacket 🙂

Erica wanted a group shot on the snow so we did another one, kneeing down

We found a neat little rock to take a long break on

Another photo of that pinnacle island with Mt. Scott behind

Summit selfie on our first Crater Lake peak together!

After spending an hour of time on the summit we leisurely descended. We met more hikers on their way up and passed on some of the conditions. We also discovered a cool looking Instagram spot on the way up, but decided to explore it on the way down, and got some even better photos. The scrambling to and from that spot was very fun as well. Later in the afternoon we drove south along Highway 97C towards Klamath Falls and found various places to stop for photos. Erica even found two horses and I made a hasty turnaround for her. We (well, mostly Erica) then spent at least 20 minutes petting the horses. The rest of the night was spent in Klamath Falls for food and shopping, and then we checked into the cheapest possible motel for the night (80 USD).