Crater Lake - Wizard Island 1. View from the south-southwest rim of Crater Lake caldera showing the caldera wall from Hillman Peak on the west to Cleetwood Cove on the north. Crater Lake fills half of the 8- by 10-km-diameter caldera formed during the climactic eruption of Mount Mazama volcano approximately 7,700 years ago. Volcanic rocks exposed in the caldera walls and on the flanks record over 400,000 years of eruptive history. The exposed cinder cone and andesite lava flows on Wizard Island represent only 2 percent of the total volume of postcaldera volcanic rock that is largely covered by Crater Lake. Beyond Wizard Island, the great cliff of Llao Rock, rhyodacite lava emplaced 100-200 years before the caldera-forming eruption, dominates the northwest caldera wall where andesite lava flows at the lakeshore are approximately 150,000 years old. Photograph by Charles R. Bacon. |