“Gee!” said Bennie.
From the level of the water, Crater Lake was quite a different place. Instead of looking down from the rim, you looked up, and the cliffs that hemmed you in seemed far higher and far steeper. They looked as steep as they really are. The high points around the rim—Garfield Peak, Dutton Cliffs, Llao Rock, Glacier Peak, the Watchman, were all snow-capped, and in many places the snow came down the rim ravines in great white wedges like capital V’s, almost to the blue water. The hotel looked like a little Noah’s ark.
“Say, if a guy got caught down here and had to go on shore where he couldn’t get to the trail, what would he do? Could he climb out?” Bennie asked.
“There’s a trail out over there on the east, at that lowest place,” said the doctor. “The rim is only 500 feet high there. Those two are the only trails. You might be able to climb out at some other points. A photographer once climbed up under Llao Rock and worked along the base of the lava precipices till he reached the top of the rim. But if I was caught down here in most places, I’d sit tight till a boat came for me.”
“You needn’t die of thirst, anyhow,” Spider laughed.
Slowly Wizard Island drew nearer, and at last Bennie pulled into a little cove, and they hauled the bow up. Lester pulled his skiff in a moment later. Wizard Island, all around the base, seemed to be composed entirely of huge blocks of blackish-brown lava, out of which evergreens mysteriously grew—big, fine trees, too. They scrambled up over these blocks, and soon found a trail winding up the steep slope through the woods. The lava blocks ceased now, and the whole little mountain was composed of a fine material much like cinders from a locomotive. In fact, the baby volcano now resembled nothing so much as a huge cone of cinders, covered with trees. Up and up they toiled, Mr. Stone panting under the weight of his movie camera, and at last reached the summit. Before anybody even looked about, the canteens were unslung and half emptied. Then they looked.
The top of Wizard Island was a perfect circle, like Crater Lake itself, only a tiny circle, two or three hundred feet across. Inside was a crater, about a hundred feet deep, and now filled on the south side, where the sun didn’t hit it, with a huge snow-drift pitching steeply down to the bottom.
“Ah! I thought so!” cried Mr. Stone. “Boys, get busy. I’m going to take a movie of you sliding down a crater on the snow. Try it once standing up, and see if you can keep your feet.”
The Boys Sliding down Wizard Island Crater. (Enlarged from a Movie)