10/5/15

I’ve been wanting to visit the Steens Mountain/Alvord Desert area of SE Oregon for a long time, but the ~8 hour drive from Portland has kept it from happening.  Gabriel and Marmot started talking about a fall trip and I was very tempted, even with needing to take 2 days off work to make it happen.  Then they revealed the map of their intended route…..shaped like a cat.  Obviously, I had to go.

 

We carpooled from Bend and started hiking mid-day Friday.  We started up the Big Indian Gorge trail and after it ended cross countried up out of the canyon to camp at Little Wildhorse Lake.  Though the fall days are short, the low angle lighting was beautiful and the aspen were all turning.

 

It was really cold Friday night.  My water bottle had chunks of ice in it, and my bladder (fancy plastic bag that holds water) was frozen solid.  I’m out of practice camping and totally forgot to sleep with my Sawyer filter.  There’s $20 down the drain.

 

Saturday we climbed up to Steens Mountain at 9733′, which is a pretty ugly summit full of radio towers, but has a great view, including the precipitous 5000’+ drop down to the Alvord desert below.

 

After I streaked, we followed a road over towards Kiger Gorge overlook.  From here we intended to go tag another peak, Kiger-Mann (9348′), but it was ~3 miles one way off trail, and the combination of very cold temps, short daylight, unknown water situation, and off trail route down into Little Blitzen Canyon (where we intended to camp and find our next water) made us reconsider.  After about a mile out towards the peak, we decided to enjoy the view we had of Kiger gorge and turn around.   The cat’s tail got cut a little short.

 

 

Heading back towards Little Blitzen Canyon, we decided we liked being up on the plateau and walked further west than originally planned before dropping down a route Gabriel had scoped out on satellite images before the trip.  Turns out there was actually a pretty good undocumented trail to take us down into the canyon.  There was also plenty of water and some camping opportunities along the way.  Argh, we’d have been fine to finish the cat’s tail!

 

Down in the canyon, we walked through more stands of beautiful aspen.  We were aiming to camp about 4 miles out from the car, but as we got close, the canyon narrowed and there was just no place to camp.  So we ended up just going all the way back to the car, arriving just after sunset.

 

 

We camped in the campground at the trailhead, full of hunters with giant canvas tents complete with kerosene heaters, cots, TV’s, and, I can only assume, plenty of Bud Light.

We spent Sunday playing tourists, stopping in the “town” of Fields, checking out Borax and Mickey hot springs, and driving out on the Alvord desert, a pancake flat 12 x 7 mile dry lake bed.  We took a short hike from the eastern edge of the Alvord, following a wild horse trail up to Big Sand Gap and playing around on the basalt cliffs overlooking the playa.

We car camped somewhere towards the middle of the desert under the darkest sky I’ve ever seen.  I had fun playing with my camera a bit before bed.

 

We packed up early and headed home on Monday.