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2000
January 26 2000 Crater Lake Helicopter will not be retrieved. Effort too risky, park officials say. “Although the agency decided not to make the firm remove the wreckage, that doesn’t mean it won’t be done sometime in the future,” said Mack Brock, chief of natural resources.
April 4 2000 Crater Lake likely to ban snowmobiles. Feds prohibit the vehicles in national park The door hasn’t slammed shut just yet, but it appears to be closing on snowmobilers riding into Crater Lake National Park. The National Park Service on Thursday issued a ban on recreational use of snowmobiles at nearly all national parks, including Crater Lake, citing “significant adverse environmental effect” on the park system.
However, snowmobiles are not yet restricted at Crater Lake, pending a review of the new regulations and potential exemptions, cautioned Superintendent Chuck Lundy.
Summer 2000 The USGS and their contractors extensively resurveyed Crater Lake’s inner caldera below the Lake’s surface. Using the USGS benchmarked elevation for the lake’s surface of 1883 meters (6178 feet); they determined the lake’s maximum depth to be 594 meters (plus and minus 1.2 meters [one sigma error] or a 95% uncertainty range of from 591.6 to 596.4 meters). This translates to a maximum depth of 1949 feet (with a 95% uncertainty range of 1941 to 1957 feet).
The average depth of Crater Lake, as determined by the USGS 2000 survey, is 350m (plus or minus 0.7 m [one sigma error]). This translates to 1148 ft, (with a 95% uncertainty range from 1144 to 1153 ft). Crater Lake is, on the average, the deepest in the Western Hemisphere and the third deepest in the world.
Among those lakes with basins entirely above sea level, Crater Lake is the deepest in the world. Based on average depth. Dr. Owen Hoffman, Oak Ridge, TN 37830
Summer 2000 A pair of Bald Eagles nest inside the Caldera. First time since the early 1950s, when a pair nested on the south side of Wizard Island. The eagle pair used an old Osprey nest. At least one eaglet had hatched by the time the boats began running in June. Using powerful binoculars, the young family could be observed from the Rim.
July 28 2000 A military helicopter with an Army reserve crew from Fort Lewis, Wash., carefully lowers a 1,200-pound research vessel from the crater rim to the lake to begin a month-long electronic mapping of the bottom of Crater Lake. More than half of the $200,000 price tag was paid for out of a settlement with American Eurocopter of Grand Prairie, Texas. After a helicopter owned by the firm crashed into the lake in September 1995, the firm paid the Park Service $122,500. (The passenger’s widow and estate collected about $26 million.)
August 4 2000 Mappers find that Crater Lake is deeper by an extra 26 feet as previously measured in 1959. But this may change after the mapmakers decide what is the above sea level of the lake’s baseline. In 1959 it was determined that the baseline was: 6,067 feet.
August 24 2000 Researchers finish Crater Lake map By Paul Fattig – MT
CRATER LAKE — Ancient landslides and lava flows never before seen by humans have been revealed at the bottom of the nation’s deepest lake.
The revelations came as scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of New Hampshire mapped the lake bottom with the latest deep-sea technology in a unique project at Crater Lake National Park.
But you don’t have access to sophisticated underwater mapping gadgets to glimpse the submerged caldera: the researchers have been posting online computer images of their work at http://tahoe.usgs.gov/craterlake/
“It went smooth as silk,” said Jim Gardner, a marine geologist who is chief of Pacific sea floor mapping for the USGS in Menlo Park, Calif.
A military helicopter with an Army reserve crew from Fort Lewis, Wash., carefully lifted the 11,200-pound research vessel from the lake to the rim Thursday morning, reversing its mission of July 28.
The lake is the remnant of a 12,000-foot volcano that erupted 7,700 years ago.
While there were no apparent surprises found at the lake bottom, project scientists won’t know for sure what they’ve got until other scientists pore over the data collected, Gardner said.
“Our job was to map the bottom,” he explained. “Now it’s up to other scientists to look for surprises.”
More images will be available on the Internet in the coming weeks, he said, noting that the USGS will also produce a CD-Rom of the lake bottom.
“We’ll give that away to anyone who wants it once it’s completed,” he said.
The nearly $200,000 mapping project was the first to map the scenic lake since 1959. However, the mapping technique used more than 40 years ago was crude compared to modern sonar systems, said Mac Brock, the park’s natural resource manager.
In addition to the maps, scientists are creating three-dimensional images of the lake floor, he said.
“Eventually we will have an interactive display in our visitor center so that anyone can take a ‘tour’ of the lake bottom,” Brock said.
Although the scientists of 1959 mapped with acoustics, their equipment lacked the multi-beam capability of today’s equipment. Gardner and his associates relied on high- resolution multi-beam echo-sounder technology, which sends out pulses of sound two to three times a second.
As a result, instead of the roughly 6,000 sound beams used for mapping in 1959, more than 50 million beams were pinged to the bottom this past week. Each will be accurate to within 50 centimeters, Gardner said.
The focal point was the geothermal vents on the lake floor, which is 1,932 feet below the surface at its deepest point.
In 1988, scientists in a tiny submarine surveyed about 2 percent of the lake floor. During that survey, they discovered hydrothermal vents with bacterial mats and tiny mites living around them.
This week’s research was done by a craft containing $3 million in state-of-the-art equipment and owned by C&C Technologies Inc., of Lafayette, La. The firm specializes in underwater mapping.
More than half of the $200,000 price tag was paid for out of a settlement with American Eurocopter of Grand Prairie, Texas. After a helicopter owned by the firm crashed into the lake in September 1995, the firm paid the Park Service $122,500.
Federal law requires owners of crashed aircraft to remove wreckage from crash sites in national parks.
“But the helicopter disintegrated when it crashed on the surface of lake,” explained park spokesman John Miele. “Chances of recovering it would have been slim to nil.
“An operation to recover anything from the bottom of the lake would have been very costly and risky.”
The pilot and a passenger died in the crash. Their bodies were never recovered. It’s unknown whether the underwater mappers have found the remains of the craft, Miele said.
“Everything looks like rock at this point,” he said. “They have to analyze the density of the material to determine whether they have found the remains of any of the wreck. That’s going to take a while.”
September 17 2000 Lodge Company pulls the Peyton, one of four lake launches, from the lake using an Erickson Sky Crane from Central Point. The flight cost $25,000 to lift it out, plus $7,000 in repair costs. Freezing during the winter over many years had separated the sideboards. The NPS will not let the boat be put back on the lake until a long-term boating plan has been completed. This means the boat may be out of the lake up to six years.
Of the four lake launches, the Ralph Peyton has been the most problematic.
October 3 2000 Ramsay Gerding is awarded the construction contract to rehab Rim Village Structure and
landscapes. Funds were only available for the Stone Comfort Station, Community House, Sinnott Memorial, Kiser Studio, the Promenade wall and walk at the Kiser Studio, and the paths leading to the Kiser Studio.
They hope to complete the work by next summer. Greg Hartell will be the job superintendent.
Season 2000 Crater Lake Lodge Company posts gross earnings of $7 million, employing 240 people.
Fiscal year 2000 $3,841,000
Annual visitation 476,483 visitors (Online says: 426,883)
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