Wizard Island is a volcanic cinder cone which forms an island at the west end of Crater Lake in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. The top of the island reaches 6,933 feet (2,113 m) above sea level, about 755 feet (230 m) above the average surface of the lake.
The cone is capped by a volcanic crater about 500 feet (150 m) wide and 100 feet (30 m) deep. The crater was named the “Witches Cauldron” by William Gladstone Steel in 1885, who also gave Wizard Island its name at the same time.[5] The land area of the island is 315.85 acres (127.82 ha).1
Only reachable by boat a few weeks per summer, Wizard Island is a unique summit that offers spectacular scenery. The hike up the cinder cone is 1.1 miles with ~700ft elevation along a well maintained single track trail with some chunky lava in the first hundred yards. The shuttle ride requires a hike down from the rim to the boat docks along a very wide path but does add a 700ft climb at the end of the day to get back to the parking lot.
We brought a 2M HT with 4 element Arrow Yagi, Buddipole 10M antenna with tripod and my newly aquired Yaesu Ft-818 couple with a LDG Z-817 tuner and K6ARK End fed random wire antenna. KKLHJL worked 2M and 10M with limited success. We had only 1 contact on 2M from an individual at the park administration building and nothing on 10M.
I had better success on 40/20 M CW, with about 20 contacts between the two bands. Conditions were predicted to be poor due to an incoming CME reported on 9/9/2023 but it didn’t seem to cause an issue for me.
The boat ride takes about 15 mins from the dock to the island, but on the way back the captain decided to give us an extra tour of waterfalls, Phantom Ship and the Old Man in the Lake, a log that stands on its end, floating around the lake. This was not part of the normal shuttle but being the end of the day and their needing to sort out some kind of issue with the boat we got special treatment.
Wizard Island was on my “Must Do” list since I learned it was a SOTA summit and it did not disappoint. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who is in the park doing some of the other summits or just making a special trip as we did. Plan for 5 hours from start to finish, 30 mins on the boat and 3 hours on the island plus hiking in and out of the boat docks. The total hike was about 4.5 miles from the parking lot down to the ramp, up to the summit and back and back up to the parking lot with approximately 1400ft elevation gain. The hike requires some physical fitness but should be fine for SOTA Goats.
W7MTB: Amateur Radio Notes 