Broken Top’s East Cirque Lake 9-13-18
Posted: September 22nd, 2018, 9:19 am
Staying at Sunriver, I did a bunch of day hikes while doing my own version of rehabilitating a twisted left knee. The final excursion, aided by my two trekking poles, was the six-mile round trip from the Broken Top Trailhead to the pass above Broken Top’s east cirque to take in the East Cirque lake as well as a glorious view, despite the somewhat cloudy day, of the Three Sisters and the eastern slopes of the wilderness.
Half the excitement of the outing is the drive in. From Todd Lake, it’s almost five miles up the 370 and then 380 spurs off the Cascade Lakes Highway to the trailhead. I made it quite easily in my Honda CR-V (Yes, clearance and very low gear are necessary, and the track was dusty but dry). The main difficulty driving in was lower down - the sharp contrast between sunlight and shaded patches and slamming into potholes in the deep shade before the eyes adjusted. I went in quite early, and the main problem driving out was meeting cars coming in and scraping by them on the narrow track – this a little more harrowing as you get down lower towards Todd Lake.
The hike itself is an alpine pleasure, perhaps the easiest alpine hike with the biggest bang for the distance – if you can appreciate the road trip in – of any alpine hike in the state. Mountain hemlock woods give way to hemlock/subalpine fir parklands with whitebark pines taking over higher up.
The established trail to the lake leaves the Broken Top Trail at a signless post and ascends the lake’s outflow creek, passing two small waterfalls. Ball Butte is to your right, and Broken Hand dominates the ridge ahead. All the while, Broken Top’s colorful layered ridges stab into the firmament, and you get glimpses of the Crook Glacier issuing from the expansive south cirque.
I arrived at a debris basin below imposing moraines, and hiked up into a notch to the shore of the East Cirque Lake. The remnants of the eastern portion of the now disjunct Bend Glacier hung above the pure turquoise meltwater lake hemmed in by the steeply sloping moraines. A lone dipper hopped the shoreline, and a pair of hikers with a tripod set up were oohing and aahing at the rugged topography.
Hiking up to the pass where once the Bend Glacier spilled, I encountered a flock of water pipits and a pair of mountain bluebirds. The view took in two tarns below the larger north portion of the Bend Glacier and across Park and Red Meadows to the Three Sisters. Even though clouds had settled on the summits, I was satisfied – it was a welcome change from the thick fire haze of just a couple days before.
I passed numerous single hikers and groups heading back to parking which had filled by a varied array of AWD vehicles with more coming in on the drive down.
Because I’ve read an incredible amount of misinformation about the geology of Broken Top, here are some notes:
* The popular name for the lake, which William L. Sullivan calls ‘Crater Lake,’ seems to be ‘No Name Lake.’ Well, the lake is not in a crater; it’s a cirque lake below the eastern remnant of the Bend Glacier, so maybe East Cirque Lake or Bend Glacier Lake?
* The Bend Glacier has its biggest remnant on the north side of the viewpoint pass above the lake, but USGS topo maps still show it as it was within living memory, wrapped around the entire north and east sides of Broken Top.
* There are no craters on Broken Top. What is often called the crater is actually the south cirque, which houses the Crook Glacier. Broken Top didn’t blow its top, at least in its last iteration as a normal volcano, to create a crater like Crater Lake or Mt. St. Helens. Likewise, there is no lake in the south cirque. There’s a volcanic plug from Broken Top’s core vent near the true summit, somewhat indistinguishable from the surrounding eroded pinnacles. Broken Top is a 300,000 year-old highly eroded stratovolcano, severely modified in its aspect as the glaciers have carved their way back to its core. It is part of a province of some 50 lava-spewing vents in the Three Sisters area.
* The notch through which the user trail accesses East Cirque Lake was the site of a major breach in October 1966. It is surmised that a calving iceberg from the Bend Glacier (way more substantial then) displaced water in the lake, which breached the moraines here. The accumulating debris poured down the alpine meadows, intersected with the Crater Creek Ditch, and then joined the Soda Creek drainage to bury a section of the Cascade Lakes Highway and fan out as a debris delta on the northern shore of Sparks Lake. Wouldn't have liked to have been hiking up there on that day . . .
* The Crater Creek Ditch is a human-formed anomaly and is the cause of one of those weird wilderness boundary adjustments, where non-wilderness land points like a finger at Broken Top’s south cirque. The ditch channels meltwater from the south cirque and Crook Glacier, naturally destined for Crater Creek, instead to the Middle Fork Tumalo Creek and thus into the City of Bend Watershed.
Half the excitement of the outing is the drive in. From Todd Lake, it’s almost five miles up the 370 and then 380 spurs off the Cascade Lakes Highway to the trailhead. I made it quite easily in my Honda CR-V (Yes, clearance and very low gear are necessary, and the track was dusty but dry). The main difficulty driving in was lower down - the sharp contrast between sunlight and shaded patches and slamming into potholes in the deep shade before the eyes adjusted. I went in quite early, and the main problem driving out was meeting cars coming in and scraping by them on the narrow track – this a little more harrowing as you get down lower towards Todd Lake.
The hike itself is an alpine pleasure, perhaps the easiest alpine hike with the biggest bang for the distance – if you can appreciate the road trip in – of any alpine hike in the state. Mountain hemlock woods give way to hemlock/subalpine fir parklands with whitebark pines taking over higher up.
The established trail to the lake leaves the Broken Top Trail at a signless post and ascends the lake’s outflow creek, passing two small waterfalls. Ball Butte is to your right, and Broken Hand dominates the ridge ahead. All the while, Broken Top’s colorful layered ridges stab into the firmament, and you get glimpses of the Crook Glacier issuing from the expansive south cirque.
I arrived at a debris basin below imposing moraines, and hiked up into a notch to the shore of the East Cirque Lake. The remnants of the eastern portion of the now disjunct Bend Glacier hung above the pure turquoise meltwater lake hemmed in by the steeply sloping moraines. A lone dipper hopped the shoreline, and a pair of hikers with a tripod set up were oohing and aahing at the rugged topography.
Hiking up to the pass where once the Bend Glacier spilled, I encountered a flock of water pipits and a pair of mountain bluebirds. The view took in two tarns below the larger north portion of the Bend Glacier and across Park and Red Meadows to the Three Sisters. Even though clouds had settled on the summits, I was satisfied – it was a welcome change from the thick fire haze of just a couple days before.
I passed numerous single hikers and groups heading back to parking which had filled by a varied array of AWD vehicles with more coming in on the drive down.
Because I’ve read an incredible amount of misinformation about the geology of Broken Top, here are some notes:
* The popular name for the lake, which William L. Sullivan calls ‘Crater Lake,’ seems to be ‘No Name Lake.’ Well, the lake is not in a crater; it’s a cirque lake below the eastern remnant of the Bend Glacier, so maybe East Cirque Lake or Bend Glacier Lake?
* The Bend Glacier has its biggest remnant on the north side of the viewpoint pass above the lake, but USGS topo maps still show it as it was within living memory, wrapped around the entire north and east sides of Broken Top.
* There are no craters on Broken Top. What is often called the crater is actually the south cirque, which houses the Crook Glacier. Broken Top didn’t blow its top, at least in its last iteration as a normal volcano, to create a crater like Crater Lake or Mt. St. Helens. Likewise, there is no lake in the south cirque. There’s a volcanic plug from Broken Top’s core vent near the true summit, somewhat indistinguishable from the surrounding eroded pinnacles. Broken Top is a 300,000 year-old highly eroded stratovolcano, severely modified in its aspect as the glaciers have carved their way back to its core. It is part of a province of some 50 lava-spewing vents in the Three Sisters area.
* The notch through which the user trail accesses East Cirque Lake was the site of a major breach in October 1966. It is surmised that a calving iceberg from the Bend Glacier (way more substantial then) displaced water in the lake, which breached the moraines here. The accumulating debris poured down the alpine meadows, intersected with the Crater Creek Ditch, and then joined the Soda Creek drainage to bury a section of the Cascade Lakes Highway and fan out as a debris delta on the northern shore of Sparks Lake. Wouldn't have liked to have been hiking up there on that day . . .
* The Crater Creek Ditch is a human-formed anomaly and is the cause of one of those weird wilderness boundary adjustments, where non-wilderness land points like a finger at Broken Top’s south cirque. The ditch channels meltwater from the south cirque and Crook Glacier, naturally destined for Crater Creek, instead to the Middle Fork Tumalo Creek and thus into the City of Bend Watershed.