The sun sets over Crater Lake National Park, seen from Rim Village on the south side of the caldera. Jamie Hale/The Oregonian

Times are tough at Crater Lake National Park, where visitation sharply declined in 2024 and access to the lake via a main trail is set to soon close for years. On top of it all, the park’s top leader resigned Friday.

Superintendent Kevin Heatley stepped down after just five months at the park, citing the Donald Trump administration’s ongoing cuts to National Park Service staff as his reason for taking a buyout offer.

Before taking the park’s lead role in January, Heatley worked as the deputy chief of the Bureau of Land Management’s National Environmental Policy Act, Planning and Decision Support Division.

“It is really not an easy decision and not something I take lightly to walk away from Crater Lake,” Heatley told the Washington Post. “But I’m tired of waking up at 3 in the morning and not being able to fall back asleep because I’m concerned about how I’m going to navigate the latest staffing communiqué.”

Only one staff member was reportedly fired from Crater Lake during the widespread cuts to the park service in February. The entire park service had only 18,066 employees in mid-May, a nearly 16.5% drop from fiscal year 2023, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

“That’s not a sustainable model for running an organization — or a park,” Heatley said.

The public affairs office at the park did not respond to questions from SFGATE on the leadership gap at Crater Lake following Heatley’s departure or on the timeline to find a replacement superintendent.

The resignation comes as the park prepares for a busy summer season ahead of major changes. Earlier this year, the park announced that access to the lake itself and boat tours will be suspended after this summer until at least 2029, as a major restoration project is set to close the Cleetwood Cove trail.

The park has also faced a decline in visitors over the past several years. Crater Lake saw an estimated 504,942 visitors in 2024, the lowest total since 2012 and a 33% decrease from the park’s peak year in 2016, according to park data. Visitation at the park typically peaks in July and August each year.

This is during a period where visitation across national parks has surged. Overall, national parks recorded 331.9 million visits last year, representing an increase of 2% over 2023.

Park officials have given several reasons for the decline in 2024, including gas prices, trail closures, wildfires, extreme weather patterns and the lack of electric vehicle charging stations inside the park, according to a park service spokesperson interviewed by the Oregonian earlier this year.

Crater Lake is a very remote national park. The nearest airport to the park is in Medford, a nearly 70-mile, 1 1/2-hour drive away. The park is 244 miles from Portland, the state’s largest city.

The park also found a new concessioner in 2024, contracting Kansas-headquartered ExplorUS to take over operations from Aramark, which was ousted for mismanaging the site. ExplorUS managed to earn a “satisfactory” review from the National Park Service in 2024, according to documents provided to the Oregonian.

The region has had to deal with increased wildfires over the past several years, including the 2024 Middle Fork Fire that burned over 5,000 acres and closed the north entrance to the park temporarily.