Belknap Crater lava field
— — a country of black rock that hasn't grown anything back yet.
Not only on a wall.
“Belknap Crater is a shield volcano in the Oregon Cascades, and the lava field it threw down covers about sixty-five square miles along McKenzie Pass. The flows are young — the youngest about 1,500 years — and most of the rock is still bare. Highway 242 cuts straight across the field, past the Dee Wright Observatory, a small basalt hut built from the rock at hand. from the studio
Belknap Crater lava field, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Belknap Crater is a basaltic shield volcano in the central Oregon Cascades, just west of McKenzie Pass and the Three Sisters Wilderness. The summit reaches 6,872 feet. Its lava flows cover roughly sixty-five square miles of the surrounding plateau and are among the youngest in Oregon — the most recent eruptions, from satellite vents on the south flank, came about 1,500 years ago. Most of the rock is still bare; soil and lichen have barely started. The field straddles the boundary between Willamette and Deschutes National Forests and is cut by Oregon Highway 242, the McKenzie Pass scenic byway, which is closed by snow most of the year.
The flows are pahoehoe and aa basalt, the same rock that builds the shields of Hawaii, though Belknap is built on a Cascade-arc base rather than a hot-spot one. Walking the surface, the texture changes every few yards — ropy crust where the lava cooled smooth, jagged clinker where it broke as it moved. The Dee Wright Observatory at the pass, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935 from the same rock, has windows aligned to each Cascade peak — the Sisters, Mount Washington, Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood — that the field looks out on.
Oregon Highway 242 over McKenzie Pass is the access. It opens around mid-June and closes with the first heavy snow, usually in November; check Oregon Department of Transportation before driving. The Dee Wright Observatory is a short walk from the highway and the best single vantage on the field. The half-mile Lava River Trail loops from the observatory through the pahoehoe. For more, the Pacific Crest Trail crosses the field a half-mile north, and the Little Belknap summit is a two-mile climb from the trailhead at Lava Camp Lake. Bring water — there is none on the rock.