Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

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adamschneider
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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by adamschneider » October 11th, 2013, 12:21 pm

If we want to talk about geological semantics...

There are very few obvious calderas around; Newberry and Crater Lake (Mt. Mazama) are the two that come to mind in Oregon. Mt. St. Helens' crater is huge, but it's not technically a caldera because the bowl formed from a landslide and the resulting explosion, not the collapse of a magma chamber. Broken Top isn't even close to having a caldera.

There aren't very many intact or even semi-intact craters either, at least not on the really big volcanoes. South Sister and Mt. Hood has one (and MSH, obviously), but craters tend to erode. They're easiest to find on young cinder cones like LeConte Crater on the Wickiup Plain.

So what's on top of Broken Top? It was a crater, but I think now it'd technically be better described as a cirque — a bowl formed by erosion, usually glacial erosion. (Black Crater, a few miles to the north of BT, is a great example of a cirque that's been mislabeled.)

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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by Zia » October 11th, 2013, 3:48 pm

Yes I hiked into Crook Glacier

Image

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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by Bruceb » October 14th, 2013, 7:12 pm

To the many who have contributed to this thread, Crusak, Payslee, Guy, and especially to the fellow who posted the link to the Oct. 1966 “Ore Bin” publication. I THINK I FINALLY UNDERSTAND THE CONFUSIONS AND CAN HEREIN CLARIFY!

Note: there is a sketch map of the area in the Ore Bin’s article, on page 11, that clarifies, but also evidences some of the many confusions!
Note: my own background includes that I’ve hiked into No Name Lake, across the low col, and down across the Bend Glacier. Also, on another hike, I entered the crater that Crusak shows in his 8/30 posting.

1. Crater Creek flooded severely in October of 1966.
2. Crater Creek has more than one branch.
3. The main branch runs up into what modern maps label as the Crook Glacier.
4. This glacier is the one shown in Crusak’s first photo (8/30 posting)…. The glacier’s headwall runs up against the main, highest, summit of Broken Top. The glacier is in a south-facing bowl.
5. Crusak believed that there was a lake hidden away under all the solid ice and snow he saw, even though it was September.
6. I also was up there in late season in the 90s, and saw zero evidence that there is any lake at the foot of the Crook Glacier.
7. The Ore Bin article has a footnote that states that the “Crook Glacier” on earlier maps had been shown in a different location than on modern maps—
8. Namely, earlier maps had placed the Crook Glacier in such a way that it drained directly into No-Name Lake (elevation 8,038 ft). (the early maps had the glacier on the east-facing slope of Broken Top’s easterly peaks, and then draining right into No-Name Lake).
9. The east branch of Crater Creek is the branch that the flood of ’66 came down. I was incorrect in my earlier posting thinking that the flood had come out of the Crook Glacier and down the main branch.
10. So, you can now see some of the confusions! A flood came down Crater Creek from a nameless lake that on older maps showed the Crook Glacier as its source. So it would be very easy for some, perhaps even guidebook writers, to call this nameless lake “Crater Lake,” and then easy to transpose it onto modern maps and think there is a “Crater Lake” in the south-facing bowl that on modern maps houses the Crook Glacier! Argh!
11. Finally, this isn’t a main point, but worth mentioning--- the Ore Bin article also stated that part of the water for No-Name Lake comes from the Bend Glacier. Wrong! If you have hiked to No-Name, then over the low col and down and across the Bend Glacier, you know that this would be against the Laws of Gravity!
12. So, what feeds No-Name Lake are the permanent snowfields on the east face of the two peaks so prominent from the Lake. I will bet that during the Little Ice Age these snowfields actually were a small glacier. I’ll bet that even as recently as the early 1900s, explorers would have not found a lake at all. This may be a reason the lake was never officially named.

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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by adamschneider » October 15th, 2013, 12:20 am

That all sounds about right, Bruce.

Since No-Name Lake is halfway between Broken Top and Broken Hand, how about we all just agree to call it Broken Lake? (It seems especially appropriate given the occasional catastrophic floods.)

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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by Guy » October 15th, 2013, 6:08 am

Yep it would seem that article answers where the confusion came from:

1) The Crook Glacier name being applied first to one Glacier & then another:

2) Crater Creek having a second branch fed by No Name Lake.

Of course since Sullivan used the name Crater Lake for No Name lake in the latest addition of his book this confusion isn't going to be going away soon :) ..
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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by kelgreysmith » November 4th, 2013, 8:52 pm

Today I found something interesting;
I've always wondered why USGS maps list the site from everything to "Unnamed Lake" or "Un-Named Lake" to "No-Name Lake" to just unlabeled. Today I saw the remains of the Osborne Fire Finder from the lookout on Three Creeks Butte, burned down in 2002.

The map on the compass appeared to be original (built in the 1940s) but didn't see a date, and though partially burned I imagine it was USGS, considering the modern font and township/range sections (and use by the Forest Service).

So whether this was just misnomered somewhere along the line or the name was purposely taken away is beyond me but does anybody know about Crook Lake?

Image

Although Crook Glacier is not the source (and not in that location) it seems like it would solve some of these semantics issues if they called it Crook Lake again..

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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by adamschneider » November 4th, 2013, 9:28 pm

Wow, great find! There is absolutely no doubt that the "Crook Lake" on that map is the one we've been talking about.

But one strange thing is that they've got the Crook Glacier label sitting on these snowfields on the east side of Broken Top:
Image

Those may well be snow-covered year-round, but I don't know if they qualify as a glacier. Still, I wonder whether this old map reflects how someone originally intended for things to be named; if so, then the question would be, if not Crook, what did they call the glacier inside the "crater"?

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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by adamschneider » November 4th, 2013, 9:39 pm

Aha! Check out what I found on Portland State University's "Glaciers of the American West" page:
Image
(The "Phillips" in question is: Phillips, K. N., 1938, Our vanishing glaciers; observations by Mazama research committee on glaciers of the Cascade Range in Oregon: Mazama, v. 20, no. 12, p. 24-41.)
Last edited by adamschneider on March 9th, 2017, 11:08 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by R11 » November 5th, 2013, 12:47 pm

Bruceb wrote: 12. So, what feeds No-Name Lake are the permanent snowfields on the east face of the two peaks so prominent from the Lake. I will bet that during the Little Ice Age these snowfields actually were a small glacier. I’ll bet that even as recently as the early 1900s, explorers would have not found a lake at all. This may be a reason the lake was never officially named.
adamschneider wrote:Wow, great find! There is absolutely no doubt that the "Crook Lake" on that map is the one we've been talking about.

But one strange thing is that they've got the Crook Glacier label sitting on these snowfields on the east side of Broken Top:
Image

Those may well be snow-covered year-round, but I don't know if they qualify as a glacier. Still, I wonder whether this old map reflects how someone originally intended for things to be named; if so, then the question would be, if not Crook, what did they call the glacier inside the "crater"?
Those "permanent snowfields" on the east side are definitely mostly dirty ice and the last dregs of the once massive glacier that formed the moraine in the first place. In that same PSU article there is this photo of the then appreciably larger toe of the glacier above the lake in 1938. Amazing how much it's been depleted since then even...
TheRealCrookGlacierNotThatLongAgo.jpg

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Re: Broken Top's Hidden Lake (AKA No Name Lake) - 2013/08/28

Post by Bruceb » December 1st, 2013, 12:52 pm

You guys all rock!
These new photos from the past and from the Osborne fire finder explain the confusions very well. Now, if the maps we all use could just get revised to all agree with one another, we'd be in the money! I'll bet that the USGS and other mapmakers have quite a big backlog of relabeling to do at this point in the climate change scenario-- lots of ice bodies that formerly were correctly labelled as glaciers are now either gone or are reduced to non-moving residual ice bodies like what now feeds No Name Lake.
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