Mountain Lakes
Wilderness Area
Mountain
Lakes Evening
Imagine
that this classic tent is your home for an entire summer. For
a story about three adolescents' wilderness sojourn at a mountain
lake in Southern Oregon, click here.
Mountain
Lakes Morning
Smell
your morning coffee brewing as the Sun draws reflections in the
still waters.
2L
3L
Mountain
Lakes Wilderness Commentary
Situated on the
drier eastern fringe of the Southern Oregon Cascades, this small
"pocket" wilderness was one of the Forest Service's
original three "Primitive Areas" in Oregon and Washington.
It was established in 1930. It became a "Wild Area"
in 1940, and the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964 brought
it on board as one of Oregon's first modern designated Wilderness
Areas. It covers exactly one township, and is the only square-shaped
wilderness within the United States' National Wilderness Preservation
system. At 23,071 acres, it is one of Oregon's smallest Wilderness
areas.
It's amazing
but true: Like Crater Lake and East Lake and Paulina Lake to the
north, the mountain lakes basin is another snuffed-out volcano!
Geologically, it is a collapse caldera, left over after the collapse
of a mountain taller than Mt. Hood! In the case of Crater Lake,
the collapse formed one huge lake; when Mt Newberry collapsed,
it left East and Paulina lakes; and when the Mountain Lake's predecessor
collapsed, it left a basin that filled with literally hundreds
of ponds, pools, lakelets and a few larger Lakes.
This tiny area
is just stuffed with wildflowers, great creeks and ponds and lakes,
and a wonderfully variegated forest cover. One of the photographer's
favorite trees can be found on drier, sunnier mid-elevation sites:
the Oregon Sugar Pine, with its enormous, trophy-size cones and
ponderosa-like bark. This photographer's favorite trail is the
Varney Creek Trail.
Page
Last Revised 4/10/2006
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