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Crater Lake will be (more) open for business Thursday Jun 22, 2017 at 4:40 PM Jun 22, 2017 at 5:25 PM By Lee Juillerat for the Mail Tribune Traffic delays entering Crater Lake National Park and road closures inside the park should be eased with Friday's opening of both West Rim Drive and the North Entrance Road. Crater Lake Superintendent Craig Ackerman said roads are scheduled to open Friday following a "soft opening" Thursday. Traffic will be restricted to one lane with a pilot vehicle along the Union Grade — between the Wizard Island overlook and The Watchman parking area — on West Rim Drive. A two-hour closure of the Union Grade, where a section of road is being replaced, will be done in coming days, probably in the morning hours. He said night closures will be in effect periodically during the summer to allow for paving. He said it's hoped and expected the North Entrance opening will relieve long lines of backed up traffic at the South Entrance, where motorists trying to enter the park have sometimes waited an hour or longer. Until the North Entrance opens, the South Entrance is the only road in and out of the park. "There have been some long delays at Annie Creek entrance station due mostly to 100 percent of visitors being routed through there," Ackerman said. "The North Entrance opening should alleviate that some, but there will be lines over the (July 4) holiday." He said the park has not been able to install a second entrance booth because of problems in obtaining rental lift equipment needed to move the booth, the lingering snowpack and need for repairs to the booth. Other problems have resulted because, according to Ackerman, the park's information technology "does not allow for rapid credit card transactions at the stations. When there are 50 or 100 cars in line, even a 10- or 15-second lag in processing each credit card transaction adds up to a long delay for the overall queue." He said park officials are working with Century Link to upgrade the service, noting, "Ultimately the only real way to improve the IT connection is to install fiber optic line to the park, but that is a very big and expensive undertaking." During the Memorial Day holiday, when delays entering the park were extreme, "There were simply more people in the park than the roads and parking areas could accommodate," a situation Ackerman said was magnified because of roads closed by snow. During some low-snow years, the North Entrance has been opened by Memorial Day. He predicted overcrowding in Rim Village will be partially eliminated with the opening of West Rim Drive and sections of East Rim Drive, but cautioned, "During some periods there will simply be more cars and visitors than the parking areas and facilities can comfortably accommodate." Snowplow efforts also include Rim Drive to the Cleetwood Cove parking area, where a trail provides the only access to the lake. Ackermen said there is no estimate yet of when that section will open, noting the project contractor "needs to finish enough work to allow at least some parking in the new Cleetwood parking lot." Trail crews have reported the Cleetwood Trail needs maintenance, such as removing some fallen trees, and have set July 1 as a target date for opening the trail but Ackerman said that's not yet a firm date. Like last summer, a temporary dock system will be installed at Cleetwood Cove for people taking lake boat tours after the trail opens. "We would like to have boats operating for the July 4 holiday weekend, but we can't yet guarantee that," Ackerman said. He said enlarging the Cleetwood parking area will reduce but not resolve its overcrowding issues. In recent years, an increased number of visitors resulted in vehicles parking along Rim Drive near the parking area. Ackerman said most park trails remain snow-covered. He termed The Watchman Trail as "especially treacherous" and said rangers are advising visitors not to attempt to hike to the lookout. "We may close the area until the danger subsides. The same is true of Garfield Peak trail, although it is melting out more rapidly. The Watchman trail will not be open for many weeks." The Sinnott Memorial, which overlooks the lake near Rim Village, also remains closed. "The trails supervisor told me there is still as much as 20 feet of snow blocking access there," Ackerman said. "Opening Cleetwood is the priority for the trail crew."