13 Crater Lakes Around the World: From Oregon's Crater Lake to Lonar

When a volcano blows out its summit or collapses into its own emptied magma chamber, rain and snowmelt can turn the hole into a lake. These thirteen crater lakes, from Oregon to Indonesia and from the Andes to the Sahel, show how varied the results can be: blue, turquoise, green, acid or salty, and in one case formed by a falling meteorite instead of a volcano.

Crater lakes of the Americas

1. Crater Lake, Oregon, USA

About 7,700 years ago Mount Mazama, a volcano in the Cascade Range, erupted so violently that its summit collapsed, leaving a caldera that now holds a lake about 8 by 10 km across. Rain and snow slowly filled it to create the deepest lake in the United States, 594 m (1,949 ft). No rivers flow in or out, which keeps the water exceptionally clear and intensely blue. Wizard Island, a later cinder cone, rises from the western side.

Crater Lake National Park was established in 1902. The 33-mile Rim Drive is usually fully open only from July to October, because the park averages about 463 inches (11.8 m) of snow a year and stays snow-covered for some eight months; snow falls more often at park headquarters than at any other long-term weather station in Oregon.

2. Quilotoa, Ecuador

Quilotoa is a volcanic caldera about 3 km wide in Ecuador's Cotopaxi province, high in the Andes. A huge eruption around 800 years ago formed it, and the emerald-green lake inside is about 250 m deep. Hikers walk the rim at nearly 3,900 m or take the steep path down to the water, and the village of Quilotoa is the highlight of the popular Quilotoa Loop trek.

3. Katmai, Alaska, USA

In June 1912 the Novarupta eruption on the Alaska Peninsula, the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, drained magma from beneath nearby Mount Katmai, and the mountain's summit collapsed into a caldera that has since filled with a lake more than 240 m deep. The same eruption created the ash-filled Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, inside Katmai National Park, which is also famous for the brown bears of Brooks Falls.

4. Licancabur, Chile and Bolivia

The perfect cone of Licancabur, 5,916 m high, rises 32 km east of San Pedro de Atacama on the border of Chile and Bolivia. Its summit crater holds a lake of about 70 by 90 m, one of the highest lakes in the world, where night temperatures fall to −25 °C or lower. Stone structures on the summit were built by the Inca or the Atacameño people for ceremonies, and the green Laguna Verde lies at the volcano's foot on the Bolivian side.

Crater lakes of Asia

5. Kelimutu, Flores, Indonesia

On the summit of Kelimutu volcano, 1,639 m up in central Flores, three crater lakes sit side by side and change colour over the years, between turquoise, green, red and almost black, as volcanic gases and minerals in the water shift. Local tradition holds that they are resting places for souls: Tiwu Ata Mbupu, the lake of old people; Tiwu Ko'o Fai Nuwa Muri, the lake of young men and maidens; and Tiwu Ata Polo, the enchanted lake. Visitors drive up from the village of Moni before dawn to watch the sunrise over the lakes.

6. Lake Pinatubo, Luzon, Philippines

Mount Pinatubo's eruption on 15 June 1991, one of the largest of the 20th century, blew away the summit and left a caldera 2.5 km wide. A lake began to form within months and now lies at about 900 m, around 95 to 115 m deep. In September 2001 authorities dug a channel from the crater's edge that drained about a quarter of the lake, to prevent a catastrophic breakout. Today 4x4 vehicles carry visitors across the ash plains to a trailhead, followed by about an hour's walk to the turquoise water.

7. Taal, Luzon, Philippines

Taal is famous as a set of nested landscapes: a crater lake on Volcano Island, inside Taal Lake, which itself fills a much larger caldera on the island of Luzon, about 50 km south of Manila. The rocky islet of Vulcan Point sits in the crater lake. During the eruption of January 2020 the crater lake briefly vanished, then refilled by March. Volcano Island is now a permanent danger zone, and the classic view is from Tagaytay on the caldera's northern rim.

8. Okama, Mount Zaō, Japan

Okama is a round crater lake about 360 m across and 60 m deep on Mount Zaō, on the border of Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures in northern Honshu. Its nickname, the Five Colour Pond, comes from the way its milky emerald water changes with sun and weather. In winter Zaō is a major ski area, famous for its juhyo or "snow monsters", trees encased in rime ice and snow.

9. Heaven Lake, Paektu Mountain, China and North Korea

Heaven Lake (Cheonji in Korean, Tianchi in Chinese) fills the summit caldera of Paektu Mountain, also called Changbai, on the border of China and North Korea. The caldera was created by the great eruption of 946 AD. The lake sits at 2,189 m, reaches 384 m deep and is usually frozen from mid-October to mid-June. The mountain is regarded as the spiritual home of the Korean people, and the Chinese side of the lake lies in Jilin province.

10. Lonar, Maharashtra, India

Lonar is the odd one out: its crater was blasted by a meteorite impact, not a volcano. The crater is about 1.8 km wide and 150 m deep, in Buldhana district, and it is the only terrestrial impact crater known to have formed entirely in basalt, the Deccan Traps lava of 66 million years ago. Age estimates range from about 50,000 to 570,000 years. The lake is salty and highly alkaline, and in June 2020 it turned pink for a few weeks when salt-loving microbes bloomed. Old temples line the crater floor, and Lonar became a Ramsar wetland in 2020.

Crater lakes of Africa and New Zealand

11. Crater lakes of the Albertine Rift, Uganda

The western branch of Africa's Great Rift Valley, the Albertine Rift, runs through western Uganda, and its volcanic fields are dotted with craters, many holding lakes. Queen Elizabeth National Park is famous for its volcanic cones and deep craters, among them the Katwe craters. Lake Katwe is salty, and local communities have extracted salt from it for centuries.

12. Deriba, Jebel Marra, Sudan

The Deriba caldera, about 4.8 by 6.4 km across, crowns the Jebel Marra massif in Darfur, and its rim, at 3,024 m, is the highest point in Sudan. It holds two lakes: a salty one about 11.5 m deep in the northeast and a fresher one about 108 m deep inside a volcanic cone. The last large eruption here happened around 3,500 years ago.

13. Ruapehu, New Zealand

Mount Ruapehu, 2,797 m, is the highest point of New Zealand's North Island and one of its most active volcanoes. Its warm, acidic crater lake, Te Wai ā-moe, is surrounded by the summits of Tahurangi, Te Heuheu and Paretetaitonga. On Christmas Eve 1953 a lahar from the lake swept away the rail bridge at Tangiwai and 151 people died in the train that followed. Today the mountain, in Tongariro National Park, hosts the Whakapapa and Tūroa ski areas, which together give Ruapehu the largest skiable terrain in the country.

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• Baishuitai: White Water Terraces below the Haba Snow Mountains
• Don’t Panic: A Snowboard Film Excerpt

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