Crater Lake — Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025

One of my hiking friends and I have been wanting to get up to Crater Lake for years. Yesterday was finally the day! It turned out to be quite wet - I'd recommend visiting on a drier day if possible. Our party was two people and one dog.

Total distance was under 3 miles with only about 800' of gain, but it still took us about 3.5 hours due to the poor quality of the trail, and bushwhacking our way back to the trail or waterfalls a few times.

ROAD: The Money Creek Road is in good shape all the way to the top - very few potholes. It is narrow in the canyon along the creek, but safe enough at the moment. I wouldn't recommend it for low-clearance vehicles since there are a few very rocky sections, including some big dips. along with several large "humps" in the road that will test your break over angle. We made it fine in my regular Subaru Forester, but all the other vehicles we saw were high-clearance trucks or SUVs.

PEOPLE: I had never seen anyone else in this area while hiking up to Lake Elizabeth, but we actually saw two other cars at the end of the road, plus a group of three who went to the lake. Then on our way out, we saw two additional cars parked at Lake Elizabeth.

TH: There is limited parking alongside the road at Lake Elizabeth - maybe 3-4 cars max. We didn't explore around Lake Elizabeth on this day, but my friend said the trail around it was very wet a week ago. The lot at the end of the road is bigger, probably 5-6 cars could squeeze in there OK and still leave room for turnarounds. There are no signs at the trailhead at the top of the road. There are two obvious trails that are basically overgrown old roads. The left-hand one goes to the Damon and Pythias Mine, and the right-hand one goes to Crater Lake.

TRAIL: The trail to Crater Lake is quite primitive. It's generally not too hard to follow, but there are several places with large messy blowdowns obscuring the trail. We lost the trail once or twice on the way up, and once on the way back. As usual for these types of rudimentary trails, if you don't see a clear trail for 20 feet or more, then you are probably not on it, and you should double back to find the turn you missed.

The trail has seen some maintenance, but it is overgrown enough that you will get pretty wet if it's raining or dewy. In addition, the tread is quite muddy and goes through some boggy sections in the upper part near the lake, so waterproof footwear is pretty much a requirement.

Bring a map, and ideally a GPS with the latest maps if you think you will have difficulty with navigation. Getting off the trail is going to slow you down immensely, as the brush, small trees, and blowdowns in the area can be pretty bad. The trail in Gaia accurately represents the best route.

VIEWS: The drive up there has some nice views of the surrounding peaks, and Money Creek, but we didn't see any of the peaks due to low clouds. The lake was pretty, but we also didn't see most of the peaks around it. Surprisingly there was not a lot of water in Money Creek.

There are quite a few waterfalls along the creek (Crater Creek?). Some of them are very close to the trail, others would require a detour. The lowest waterfall is accessible via a short spur trail, though you have to cross over the creek at the falls to actually see the falls properly (see photo #2). On the way in, we ended up on this spur trail by mistake, and had to bushwhack around to figure out where we missed the trail continuing up to the lake.