Pumice Castle formation
— — pink turrets the mountain left behind.
Not only on a wall.
“An eroded layer of orange-pink pumice halfway down the caldera wall, weathered into pinnacles that read as small towers from the rim road. Visible from the Pumice Castle Overlook on East Rim Drive, between Cloudcap and the Phantom Ship pullout. The pumice came from the eruption that emptied Mount Mazama almost eight thousand years ago. The rim road is closed in winter.
Pumice Castle formation, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
Pumice Castle is a formation on the east wall of the Crater Lake caldera in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. A horizontal band of orange and pink pumice, deposited during the climactic eruption of Mount Mazama roughly 7,700 years ago, has weathered faster than the surrounding lava. The result is a row of pinnacles and turrets reading as a small castle on the wall. The viewpoint sits at Pumice Castle Overlook on East Rim Drive, about three miles south of Cloudcap Overlook.
The castle is made of dacite pumice, fragments of frothy volcanic glass blown out during the eruption that collapsed Mount Mazama. The pumice layer was buried under later deposits and re-exposed when the caldera wall slumped. Pumice erodes more readily than the surrounding lava, so wind and water have carved it into a row of fluted spires. The pink and orange color comes from oxidation of iron in the glass. Geologists estimate the eruption volume at about twelve cubic miles of material.
Pumice Castle is viewed from a small pullout on the east half of Rim Drive. The 33-mile rim loop is open generally from mid-July through October, depending on snowpack; in winter the east rim is closed and the formation is not reachable by car. The overlook is signed. The view is from above and across; the formation is not approachable on foot, and the caldera walls are off-limits to hikers below the rim. Phantom Ship sits just to the south.