Picnic area · Crater Lake National Park
A shaded south-end pause for a picnic and park orientation.
Overview
Map
Plan your stop
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Crater Lake Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Crater Lake National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Crater Lake audio tourRecorded for this place
Ponderosa Picnic Area“Up ahead is Ponderosa Picnic Area, a shaded stop at the park's southern tip. Use it for a picnic or a look at the posted park map.”
Plays as you drive up to Ponderosa Picnic Area in the Parkwolf Crater Lake Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
Ponderosa Picnic Area is a small picnic and orientation stop on Highway 62 at the park’s southern tip. Keep it for a quiet table under the trees, an accessible restroom, or a quick look at the posted map and park information before driving farther in. It’s a useful pause, not a main attraction.
At 4,400 feet, this is the park’s lowest picnic area, so it gets warmer and less snow than higher parts of the park. Wildflowers begin here early in summer after snowmelt; look for skyrocket, paintbrush, lupine, wild strawberry and sweet-smelling snow bush.
Ponderosa pine dominates the forest, with sugar pine, Douglas-fir, white fir and cottonwood nearby. The yellow-red bark breaks into puzzle-like plates and can smell faintly of vanilla or butterscotch. The southern panhandle became part of the park in 1932, when 973 acres were added.
Wildlife
16 sightingsBlack BearMost seen around 8 PMSighting map
178 sightingsMule DeerMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
26 sightingsCommon RavenMost seen around 9 AMSighting map
33 sightingsTurkey VultureMost seen around 1 PMSighting map
47 sightingsRed-tailed HawkMost seen around 11 AMSighting map
71 sightingsCascades FrogMost seen around 5 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Crater Lake. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
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Parkwolf’s Crater Lake ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
