Ah! Sunshine and snow in Cascades. It's beautiful at Crater Lake National Park today. We could see on the Crater Cams that they were working with snow blowers and plows, as they usually attempt all year, to reopen the south entrance via St. Rt. 62. It will probably be open by this afternoon. We had a couple that are staying here as guests head up there just before noon. They wanted to see in they could catch the free natural history snowshoe tour that a park ranger leads every Saturday and Sunday at 1pm, weather allowing. The Park provides free snowshoes but it is best to get reservations if you are interested (541-594-3100 during business hours). Our guests took some of the extra snowshoes we have here, just in case they had to do their own expedition. :)

We received almost a full inch of the needed precipitation the past couple of days, mostly as rain but it changed back and forth. However, the mountains around us received much more precipitation mostly as snow. Just what we needed!

Here's the stats from the Park's website for the headquarters, which is about 6,100', still about 1,000' below the rim:
NEW SNOW 9"
DEPTH ON GROUND 95"
AVERAGE SNOW DEPTH THIS DATE 118.5"
PERCENT OF AVERAGE 80.2%
That's a significant increase toward what we need for the summer in the past week.

If you check the snow along the roads in the area at ODOT's road cams and TripCheck, keep in mind we are still below average, you will find such roadside snow depths as 100'" at the junctions of St Rts 138 and 230 near Diamond Lake, just north of the park, or, in the pass on SR 140 on the way to Medford there is 42 in.

An important site for monitering the snowpack in Oregon, and in the the Cascades and Fremont Mountains for us, is SNOTEL. A quick check of some of the higher sites around us show:
70" at COLD SPRINGS CAMP SNOTEL, Site Elevation: 5940 ft.
65" at FOURMILE LAKE SNOTEL, Site Elevation: 5970 ft.
52" at SWAN LAKE MTN SNOTEL, Site Elevation: 6830 ft.

There is also one of these automated stations near the high-point of the rim on the east edge of the Fremont Mountains overlooking the Great Basin called the SUMMER RIM SNOTEL. It is at an elevation 7080 ft. but I could not get the website to respond. :)

The Williamson River is starting to show a little "chocolate" in it now. It's good that the river is starting to come up, even though it is still low for this time of year. The discoloration is enough to remind me that a lot of stream restoration work is still needed, even though many people are making very positive efforts throughout the watershed.

We saw the male Wood Duck again yesterday. This time on the Williamson River adjacent to the main house, The Settlement. He still had no company of his own species. It's still early for them, especially on the east side of the Cascades at our 4,150'; but that first sighting was on March 7th! We have been given 8 more Wood Duck boxes by Ducks Unlimited to put up this year. We better get at it. The local chapter of DU is having their annual banquet in Klamath Falls this evening. We already have about 10 boxes up but last year we had 7 pairs of Wood Ducks visiting the feeders in the yard early nearly every morning after full spring weather set in.

However, lots of Buffleheads and Goldeneyes, and a few Common Mergansers have been using the Williamson river the past few days. The inclement weather brings them in to the relatively warn and open waters. I also could hear a Golden Eagle near the satellite nest on the mountain over us this morning. And there was has been a lone Belted Kingfisher hanging around all winter. Spring's coming!