An October morning at Crater Lake.

Workers at Crater Lake National Park weren’t sure what to do last year when a bathroom started leaking in the dormitory where they lived, not too far from the blue-hued caldera that’s among the most popular tourist attractions in Oregon.

Out of sight from the leisurely hikers and picture-taking families, water leaked through the bathroom floor into the common area below it. The liquid dripped onto the floor beside the refrigerator, only a few feet from an old couch and the well-worn pool table, TV and Xbox that helped off-duty staff recharge between shifts.

Someone grabbed a trash can to catch the water, which dripped on and off for weeks. Employees wondered where it came from: Was it a burst pipe? A leaky shower? Or maybe that urinal that had been broken all season?

The incident stands out only for how unremarkable it was.

Federal records examined by The Oregonian/OregonLive and interviews with people who worked in the park paint a picture of pervasive problems that extended far beyond deferred maintenance of historic buildings, hindering nearly every corner of park operations and in some cases putting park visitors, employees and the pristine natural environment at risk.

The National Park Service’s decision in 2018 to hire Crater Lake Hospitality, a subsidiary of international hospitality company Aramark, to operate park concessions and amenities led to an immediate decline in the quality of park operations that plummeted to its lowest point last year, records show.

Those problems have led the National Park Service to put the company on notice, threatening to terminate its contract.

Interviews with 15 former employees of Aramark’s subsidiary and 224 pages of annual oversight reports reveal a staggering assortment of deficiencies that went unaddressed or tolerated for years, not only by Aramark but also by the federal agency responsible for protecting and ensuring public access to one of the country’s most celebrated natural areas. Among the problems:

Park buildings have consistently suffered from disrepair under Aramark’s watch, including the Crater Lake Lodge and Mazama Cabins rented by overnight tourists. Federal park officials say the operator’s failure to complete routine maintenance and contractually obligated improvement projects damaged federally owned buildings over the last five years, with reports of burst pipes, broken roofs, flooding and rodent infestations. The Rim Dorm, which houses up to 70 seasonal employees and had the leaky bathroom, has been singled out for its particularly poor condition, receiving a score of zero out of five on its 2023 inspection. The company charges employees hundreds of dollars a month to live in the shabby conditions.

Several serious environmental issues were reported in 2023, which the National Park Service linked to what it said were improper actions by the concession operator. They included an estimated 4,500-gallon diesel spill caught by a containment unit in what park officials labeled a “close call,” a 5,000-gallon overflow of raw sewage into the park, and an undetermined amount of fuel spilled at the lone ramp for boaters and hikers to access lake water. Oregon environmental regulators found that Aramark’s subsidiary failed to comply with state requirements for timely reporting of major spills but they did not dole out any fine or punishment.

At least two allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment involving company employees were investigated by federal police in 2022, and the National Park Service knew about other allegations of sexual assault from 2019. Officials have not said whether any charges have been filed, but federal investigators expressed concerns over the operator’s handling of the latest incidents and pointed to inadequate oversight of dorms that they said contributed to persistent employee conduct issues, records show. Some employees accused of sexual assault were allowed to continue working in the park and living in employee housing, former coworkers said.

At least three tourists reported serious injuries in 2023 at operator-run businesses in the park, according to federal records. Aramark’s subsidiary failed to report a broken arm, broken leg and a head injury, all at the Rim Village Cafe and Gift Shop near the main park entrance. One visitor is considering suing Aramark’s subsidiary and the National Park Service after slipping on what she said was untreated ice, leaving her with a shattered wrist.

Park restaurants run by Aramark’s subsidiary repeatedly scored poorly on health inspections. The Crater Lake Lodge restaurant rated unsatisfactory for its first inspection of the season four times in five years, records show, and violations include improperly cooked and stored food, unclean kitchens and untrained staff.

Boat tours, also operated by Aramark’s subsidiary, failed to comply with safety requirements, according to federal records. The company operated boat tours without appropriate emergency plans or proper life raft training, park officials said, and in one instance, boat staff allowed a child younger than 2 years old onto a tour, despite young children being prohibited due to safety concerns.

The full extent of problems at Crater Lake may run deeper than those documented in federal records. Former employees said they worried about filing reports with state or federal agencies or discussing the issues publicly, for fear of retribution from the company.

“We were at their mercy. They own our housing, they own our food, they own our job,” Thane Rockwood, a lead bartender at Crater Lake Lodge from 2022 to 2023, told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “If we had reported some of this stuff, what would happen is it would come back on our own heads … you can’t get back into the parks if you make a big enough stink.”

By the end of the 2022 tourist season, the National Park Service gathered ample documentation to require Aramark’s subsidiary to improve performance or to be formally threatened with the end of its contract, records show. The contract is set to run through 2030.

But the National Park Service waited until this winter to threaten to terminate the contract, only after documented deficiencies at Crater Lake deteriorated further and U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, publicly outed problems and called for federal officials to reconsider their long-term contract with the concession operator.

The National Park Service declined to respond to written questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive about its oversight of Crater Lake, including why it did not threaten to end the contract with Aramark’s subsidiary sooner. The agency said in its most recent contract evaluation from January that its staff “invested considerable time and effort” to help the company but Aramark’s subsidiary failed to demonstrate improvement.

“Systemic issues” pervaded across operational areas reviewed by the National Park Service, and officials said they remained concerned Aramark and its subsidiary “have been unable to demonstrate an ability to effectively meet their performance obligations under the contract.”

It’s unclear if any concession operators at other national parks have performed as poorly. But the National Park Service said Aramark subsidiaries, which operate concessions at 15 national park sites, have mostly received positive annual reviews and none has seen the level of challenges documented at Crater Lake.

Federal officials declined to quantify how many times they’ve threatened to terminate the contract of a concession provider at any of its parks nationwide.

“Termination would be an extremely rare action, and one we don’t take lightly. But consistent failures to meet contract requirements led to our notice of intent to terminate this contract to protect visitors and park resources,” David Szymanski, Pacific West regional director for the agency, said in an earlier statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Aramark, which speaks on behalf of its subsidiary, declined to respond to specific allegations and criticisms when offered a chance for this story. Aramark did not say whether it would fight to keep the contract at Crater Lake after previously saying it “looks forward to a successful 2024 season.”

In a statement, the company pointed to “significant changes” in its leadership team at Crater Lake and “numerous improvements to facilities,” including the cabins at Mazama Village, rooms at Crater Lake Lodge and the Rim Village Cafe and Gift Shop.

“We take very seriously our obligation to meet the needs of the National Park Service and millions of park visitors. In the past few years, key elements of our work at Crater Lake National Park have not lived up to the standards we establish for our performance, and the national park visitors deserve our very best,” company spokesperson Sheena Weinstein said in the statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “We will continue to work closely with the National Park Service on next steps to deliver a positive experience for park visitors.”

Crater Lake National Park is one of the most beloved natural attractions in the Pacific Northwest, famous for its beautiful blue lake that measures as the deepest in America. It is the country’s fifth oldest designated national park and received more than half a million visitors last year, according to federal data.

The National Park Service oversees 429 federal parks and other historic sites across the country, turning to concessioners to manage things like lodging, restaurants, campgrounds and tourist activities. It’s supposed to be a win-win. Concessioners pay a franchise fee based on sales to the federal government but otherwise keep the profits of those operations, while those companies pay to maintain and improve the government-owned buildings, potentially recouping some costs when a contract expires and a new operator pays to take over.

Publicly traded Aramark is one of several large companies that has increasingly gained a foothold in the national park system, winning the Crater Lake contract following a 15-year stint by hospitality company Xanterra, which also operates concessions at multiple national park sites. It’s unclear how much money Aramark’s subsidiary has made under the deal. But in 2021, a year when some tourist operations were cut short because of the pandemic, the National Park Service received more than $1.3 million in franchise fees at Crater Lake, records show – suggesting gross receipts that year could be in the ballpark of $11 million, based on the terms of the company’s contract.

Managing park concessions can be a difficult job in the best of circumstances, let alone at a remote location like Crater Lake, an hour or two from cities like Klamath Falls and Medford, where winter conditions are among the harshest in the Pacific Northwest. Aramark’s predecessor had its share of challenges, including an infamous bed bug infestation in 2014. But in the end the company received positive marks from the National Park Service.

In its final two reviews at Crater Lake, Xanterra received overall ratings of satisfactory and superior, the two highest levels available in the federal government’s four-tiered scoring system. Aramark’s subsidiary scored much worse: marginal, satisfactory, marginal, marginal and, in 2023, unsatisfactory.

One overall unsatisfactory rating or back-to-back ratings of marginal were enough to justify contract termination, according to National Park Service guidelines in place at the time. The agency has since implemented changes to its annual review system that are harsher on concessioners which, if in place earlier, could have left Aramark’s subsidiary with unsatisfactory overall scores in every year of operations.

In annual reviews, the word “hope” appeared at least 37 times as park officials expressed desire that Aramark’s subsidiary would address a variety of problems. Those hopes did not seem to materialize, however, as many of the same issues repeated each year, and new problems piled up.

The lack of more aggressive federal oversight at Crater Lake gave way to what has been described as a particularly disastrous 2023 season, which saw two employee walkouts that led to mass resignations, and the firing or resignation of several upper-level managers in the middle of the season.

Lawrence Lyman, who has worked as a restaurant server in Yellowstone, Death Valley, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Teton and Everglades national parks, as well as three separate stints at Crater Lake between 2004 and 2023, said the issues reached a tipping point for him last summer.

“I’ve never seen a national park lodge as mismanaged as Crater Lake,” Lyman said. “Crater Lake was my favorite place to work, and I think Aramark has stolen that from me and I’ll never forgive them for that.”

Red flags from the start

No problem stands out more in federal reports than the failure of Aramark’s subsidiary to meet expectations for maintaining, repairing and improving buildings at Crater Lake National Park, some of which are on the National Register of Historic Places.

The operator earned unsatisfactory marks for asset management in four of five years, receiving its lowest score in 2023.

“Failures” to maintain assets had been a “persistent issue,” federal officials wrote in their latest report. Those assets suffered a “decline in condition as documented through the numerous and increasing number of maintenance-related deficiencies.”

In fact, red flags were apparent from the start.

Federal officials offered a gushing evaluation of Aramark’s predecessor, saying it “showed remarkable commitment” to maintaining buildings in the final year of its contract. Not only did the predecessor complete preventative and recurring maintenance, it also made progress on deferred maintenance and replacement projects.

During the first year under Aramark’s subsidiary, however, issues mounted. Among other things, the company reacted to problems instead of planning ahead, failed to quickly fix faulty fire alarms and waited until “significant system failures” occurred at the lodge to hire a maintenance manager – six months into the contract, according to the federal review.

Most notably, officials wrote, the lodge experienced significant damage to water and fire suppression systems that could have been prevented by addressing minor maintenance issues. The lack of qualified maintenance staff resulted in “costly failures,” they said.

Even one of the biggest deferred-maintenance projects that got completed, replacing the lodge roof in 2022, had issues.

Park inspectors deemed the work “minimally acceptable” and uncovered “frequent and sometimes serious issues” with the project, primarily blaming Aramark’s subsidiary for failing to properly oversee construction, according to records. Construction sometimes lasted long after agreed-upon hours, spurring complaints from overnight guests, and the project didn’t alleviate water infiltration in the snow-heavy climate, as federal officials had initially expected.

Meanwhile, a burst pipe in January 2023 flooded portions of four floors of the lodge, shorting out the fire alarm system when water reached the basement, according to a park review. Inspectors determined the cause to be a failure by Aramark’s subsidiary to properly winterize the lodge, a deficiency the National Park Service noted had happened “repeatedly since Crater Lake Hospitality has held the contract.”

Aramark’s subsidiary separately failed to make progress on eight of nine contractually obligated improvement projects originally estimated to cost $8.6 million, reports show. “We do hope to see significant progress … in 2020,” federal officials wrote, before finding a lack of action the next year and writing, again, “we do hope to see significant progress … in 2021.”

Little progress followed. After the 2023 season and despite extending many deadlines by a year or more, only one of the nine improvement projects had been completed, federal officials wrote. Aramark’s subsidiary ignored repeated warnings about those blown deadlines, including a March 2022 letter park officials say they sent to the company that threatened to cut short the contract if changes were not made.

The National Park Service declined to say if it followed through on that threat.

Perhaps the biggest problem at the park is the Rim Dorm, a dilapidated 50-year-old building near Crater Lake Lodge that has been slated for major renovation or demolition since the 1990s.

Aramark’s subsidiary was supposed to deliver a $3.9 million “major rehabilitation” of the dorm, according to its 2018 contract, to include “rodent/pest proofing,” new showers and toilets, upgraded insulation, new windows and doors and siding repair and replacement, among other things.

“It was a disgusting dorm,” said Eduard Karpoev, a junior at Georgia State University who lived and worked at Crater Lake in 2023. Employees like Karpoev paid up to $263.50 a month to live there, a cost that included food, according to Aramark job postings.

Aside from the bathroom leak, Karpoev remembered a pervasive filth, bathrooms that never seemed to get cleaned, and food rotting in the refrigerators – an issue not just with employee cleanliness, but also frequent power outages and inadequate food storage space, federal inspectors said.

National Park Service inspections noted that the back of the building had literally been coming apart, allowing rodents, wind and moisture into the building. A temporary solution, screwing plywood boards over the gap, didn’t happen until 2023, according to one employee involved in the project.

The latest inspection of the dorm resulted in a score of zero, federal records show.

The National Park Service did not respond to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive about why Aramark’s subsidiary has been allowed to house employees in the dilapidated building for so many years, and it did not say whether concession employees would continue to live there this year.

Karpoev, who worked night shifts at the front desk of Crater Lake Lodge, said co-workers asked him for spare space heaters after some of the dorm room heaters stopped working, or when the power went out for extended periods at the start of the busy tourist season in May, when overnight temperatures at the rim of the caldera can dip to 28 degrees.

They had to fight over extra blankets, he said.

‘No security for anybody’

Other problems at Crater Lake National Park put workers and visitors at risk of injury, assault or sickness.

In its 2023 report, the National Park Service said it was aware of “multiple visitor accidents” resulting in serious injuries at the Rim Village Cafe and Gift Shop. No such injuries were noted in previous years’ reports.

Injuries included a broken arm, a broken leg and a head injury, park officials reported. The National Park Service stopped short of blaming Aramark’s subsidiary for the injuries, saying only that the company’s failure to report them constituted yet another violation of the contract.

At least one visitor who was injured last year is looking to hold somebody responsible.

Amber Shannon told The Oregonian/OregonLive she visited the gift shop last November. She said the sidewalk was “a sheet of ice” and was untreated with salt or other traction material, making it dangerous to use. She said she slipped and fell while walking across the ice, shattering her wrist, chipping her knee and spraining her ankle.

A Bend-based law firm retained by Shannon said it is looking into legal claims against both Aramark’s subsidiary and the National Park Service.

“My whole life has been turned upside down because of this,” Shannon said. “There was no sign directing visitors to a safe entrance, no salt laid down, nor has it been shoveled. I sat on the ice for close to 30 minutes before someone came to help me.”

Employees living at Crater Lake say they also had reason to worry about their safety, citing many run-ins with dangerous co-workers.

Following the 2019 season, the National Park Service wrote that the conduct of employees living in the dorms was a “recurring problem” and no leadership had been assigned to the Rim Dorm for most of the summer season. Park rangers and others regularly found evidence of alcohol in public spaces, underage drinking and drug use, records show.

“There were several reported sexual assaults and at least one wildland fire started by employees near the housing area,” the National Park Service wrote, without addressing if those specific cases were referred to law enforcement for investigation.

Police logs from 2021 to 2023 from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, which supports the National Park Service at Crater Lake, show 64 calls to the Aramark-run dorms. Logs show seven calls for reports of crimes including assault, sex offense, illegal drugs, disorderly conduct, trespassing and active warrants. The sheriff’s department also responded to three serious injuries at the dorms, and two calls for suicide prevention in that time.

Oregon State Police responded to a complaint in May 2022 about a former employee holding what appeared to be a pipe bomb, threatening to harm the dorm building and its occupants, police and federal records show, although no criminal charges were filed against the man.

A 2022 park review also noted one allegation of sexual assault and an allegation of sexual harassment involving employees that year, both of which were investigated by federal authorities. The National Park Service declined to answer questions about the incidents and did not say whether any charges were filed. State and local law enforcement referred related questions to the National Park Service.

In its 2022 review, park officials did note that federal investigators specifically criticized the Aramark subsidiary’s handling of the latest cases, in particular its lack of oversight in employee dormitories. Not having residential advisers or managers to enforce rules in the dorms “have contributed to these persistent employee conduct issues” including reports of underage drinking, theft, assault and harassment, the National Park Service said, echoing language from records three years earlier when federal officials also documented reports of sexual assaults.

Multiple employees added that some people accused of sexual assault were allowed to remain in the dorms and on their jobs – in at least one case continuing to work alongside their accuser.

Former employees said violence and other issues, including excessive drug use, increased when Aramark’s subsidiary began hiring to fill staffing shortages in 2023. The National Park Service said the company apparently failed to ensure staffers received thorough background checks, as two employees hired in 2023 were found to have active warrants, leading to one arrest.

Jessica Martensen, the operations manager for Crater Lake Lodge in 2023, said she remembered calling law enforcement after an allegedly drunk employee went on a rampage and began tearing apart an office in the basement of Crater Lake Lodge, terrifying staff.

“This was the minute I realized there’s no security for anybody,” Martensen said.

Meanwhile, staff and visitors alike ate food from kitchens that regularly received troubling scores in federal reports.

The Crater Lake Lodge restaurant received unsatisfactory inspections at the start of four of the last five years, according to National Park Service reviews, with violations that included improperly cooked and stored food, unclean kitchens and untrained staff. Similar issues were found at the Rim Village Cafe and Gift Shop, officials said. Improper preparation of meat was cited in multiple inspections of the Crater Lake Lodge restaurant, where the menu features items like the $18 Crater Burger and a $42 New York steak.

The National Park Service called for improvements, records show, with some issues corrected only to return the next season, while other problems were perpetual. Park officials said those failures combine to “present a risk to visitor safety” at the Aramark subsidiary’s restaurants in Crater Lake.

“It was one of our big failings as a restaurant, the inspections,” Lyman, the longtime server at Crater Lake Lodge, said. “It wasn’t a kitchen I felt proud of carrying food out of.”

The National Park Service did not report any illnesses to guests due to health code violations, though Karpoev, the front desk worker, said employees reported food-related illnesses multiple times during the 2023 season. There are no records of the National Park Service closing any of the park’s kitchens due to poor inspections under Aramark’s subsidiary.

Many of the health inspection failures can be tied to a lack of employee training, the National Park Service said. The constant flux of staffing over the last two years led to many untrained kitchen employees and overworked managers who were either unable or unwilling to get them trained, former employees said.

Park officials in their report said an Aramark official, in an emailed response to the health inspections, “dismissed the findings as differences in expectations and without acknowledging the documented FDA Food Code violations.”

Fuel mishaps, raw sewage and an unmoored boat

Federal officials identified new problems at Crater Lake last year, including “serious environmental issues” and safety concerns over boat tours.

Chief among the incidents was a massive diesel fuel spill at Crater Lake Lodge that went unaddressed for five days in August.

An estimated 4,500 gallons of diesel fuel oil at the lodge leaked out of a tank into an underground concrete vault, which is designed to catch spilled oil, according to records from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The vault, located just beyond the cliffs that drop into the lake, managed to contain the oil, which investigators determined after subsequent soil and water samples came back negative.

Still, the event alarmed both state and federal officials, who chastised the Aramark subsidiary for its handling of the spill. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality said the company failed to comply with state requirements for timely reporting the leak to the Oregon Emergency Response System, and it should have acted sooner to address the leaking oil. The company also failed to offer any evidence it was inspecting or maintaining the 28-year-old oil tank and did not report the cleanup to state and federal agencies, state investigators said.

“The lack of timely response action, while thousands of gallons of diesel actively released over five days, is negligence by the facility operator,” the state review said.

Earlier in the summer, the National Park Service also discovered a 5,000-gallon spill of raw sewage into Munson Creek, a waterway that flows away from the caldera through the south side of the park. In its review, park officials faulted Aramark’s subsidiary, determining that the overflow stemmed from a grease clog in the sewer line of Crater Lake Lodge, which officials said had not properly been maintained.

The company initially declined to clean up the sewage, though it eventually conceded, taking more than a month to finish the job, the park service said. Once again, the company did not loop park inspectors into the cleanup process and had to call a contractor back after the National Park Service determined it had not done an adequate job, according to the annual review.

Fewer details are available in federal records about a third incident, a fuel spill at Cleetwood Cove, where tour boats dock to take visitors across the lake. The spill occurred when a fuel tank was emptied and closed for the season, park officials said, and proper protocols were not followed, despite the previous spill at the lodge.

The National Park Service did not say what, if any, impact the incidents had on the natural environment at Crater Lake but did offer harsh words for the concessioner.

“The severity of the environmental incidents caused by (Crater Lake Hospitality) is significant,” park officials wrote in the 2023 review, saying the company’s responses to the incidents illustrates “a lack of compliance with contract requirements and insufficient care in protecting the park’s resources and environment.”

Federal park officials also documented concerns about boat tours that resumed last year for the first time since 2020.

While Aramark issued a news release publicly celebrating the helicopter delivery of three new boats last summer, the National Park Service offered a more pessimistic view in its 2023 report, calling the delivery “poorly planned and last-minute.”

Wiring and mechanical issues delayed the boat tours for two months after they arrived, park officials reported, and problems continued after that.

Aramark’s subsidiary failed to provide training to boat staff, prompting the National Park Service to fill the void, the agency said in the report. Even then, they noted, some company workers didn’t show up for the training.

None of the 2023 boat staff were trained on the use of new life rafts, park officials said – and those life saving devices reportedly did not comply with U.S. Coast Guard requirements. Workers nonetheless began taking tourists out on the new vessels, park officials wrote.

In one documented case, boat staff allowed a child younger than 2 years old to ride in the boat, despite park regulations prohibiting anyone under the age of 3 due to safety concerns.

Christopher German, a 25-year boat captain who previously worked for Aramark subsidiaries at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, was hired on at Crater Lake for the 2023 season. German said he was shocked at what he described as a risky boat tour operation unprepared to care for the brand-new vessels.

German said he felt like he had come to a place where there were “zero policies, zero rules and regulations.”

“It was something out of the ‘Twilight Zone,’” he said.

Park officials reported no injuries or major incidents during the 2023 boat tours, but highlighted one more incident that illustrated the consequences of uncompleted maintenance projects in the park: Faulty moorings at the dock, which were not fixed even after the new boats arrived, leading to one breaking free and drifting some three miles across the lake, where it had to be saved.

‘Minimize impacts on visitors’

With three months until the beginning of the heavy tourism season at Crater Lake, it’s unclear what impact, if any, the ongoing contract dispute may have on tourists planning to visit the national park.

The National Park Service declined to answer questions about how long it might take to resolve the contract issue, or what the impact would be on services like lodging and dining if Aramark’s contract is terminated, but did say the agency “is starting the process of identifying other potential operators to provide visitor services there,” with an effort to “minimize disruption of services to park visitors.”

Aramark’s subsidiary is being given an opportunity to explain why its contract should not be terminated, but the Aramark spokesperson did not answer questions about whether it would make that case or what the substance of the argument would be. The National Park Service did not offer specifics about its current communications with Aramark’s subsidiary at Crater Lake.

While the National Park Service could immediately seek another long-term deal, the agency can also sign a temporary contract of up to three years, according to its concessions guidelines. Temporary contracts are awarded without competition and are used specifically to “avoid an interruption of visitor services.”

On Wednesday, Wyden issued a new letter to park director Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III urging officials to consider the impacts contract termination would have on tourists and the local tourism industry.

“As you move forward with this process, I ask that you take every available step to minimize impacts on visitors and park resources during the transition to a new concessionaire,” Wyden wrote.

Rockwood, the former lead bartender, said he’s relieved Aramark’s subsidiary may lose its contract at Crater Lake.

“I take it kind of personal that they were ruining our national park, that they were not being good stewards,” Rockwood said. “I hope they get something in there that works better.”