As a high school boy dying for high adventure, but subsisting on a diet of science fiction and cowboy novellas, Bruce often spent hours pouring over topographic maps of Oregon, dreaming, imagining the inspiring spectacles awaiting him as an adult with a car of his own. A place discovered on a USGS topo map became a Holy Grail for him. It took 24 years to reach its shores, but finally, in August of 1988, he sunk his cupped hand into its pure waters and drank. The sun was strong but it could not quite dispel the high altitude chill in the air.
At 8,400 ft., Wildhorse Lake is one of Oregon's highest, most remote and most unlikely lakes. It's windy mirror of the sky is nestled in an unbelievably green glacial cirque near the highest point of 9,733 ft. Steens Mountain...Just over the rim of the lake's south shore lies Little Wildhorse Lake, at 8910 ft, it doesn't quite grab the title* of "Highest Lake in Oregon." ..... Bighorn sheep dance the cliffs and golden eagles soar overhead. Cutthroat trout swim its waters. Bizarre hummingbirds assault its flowers.....Click your mouse to see exotic wildlife including Kiger Mustangs and the wild burros found in Oregon east of Adel on the Nevada border. Click now to see bizarre masqueraders at Wildhorse Lake.
(*Click here to read about Legore Lake, Oregon's highest true lake; it is in the Wallowa Mountains)
Downward, seen through the mouth of the Wildhorse Canyon, Oregon's harshest desert, the Alvord, lies nearly a vertical mile below. Its thousands of square miles of dessicated playas and scrub land are inhabited by exotic plants and animals including desert horned toads, collared lizards, antelope ground squirrels, and Mormon tea bushes. Into the transparent air rise range upon little-known range : the Pueblos, the Trout Creeks, the Santa Rosas, and innumerable others. The horizon line is Nevada... In the opposite direction, which is to look westward off the summit, it is rumored that one can view the highest peaks of the Cascades, at around 160 miles distant, but I've never seen them; what is apparent in that direction are interior gems such as Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge (70 air miles), and Gearhart Mountain Wilderness(100 miles), both in the vicinity of the fine little community of Lakeview, Oregon's highest town at 4,800 ft, home of a famous geyser, plus Hunters Hot Springs and the Warner Mountain Ski Area... (Gearhart Wilderness Area, established 11/11/1943, is one of Oregon's smallest Wilderness Areas, at only 18,709 acres).
Believe it or not, the Alvord Desert (here shown with a springtime cover of shallow water) is the site of the Women's World Record for the fastest land speed vehicle! On December 6th of 1976, Ms. Kitty Hambleton screamed across the flat white playas at a speed of 524 miles per hour, in a rocket-powered vehicle named the SM1 Motivator; in fact, her speed momentarily was up to 600mph at one point on the two-way course! .... In the image, the floor of the Alvord Desert is at 4000 ft, while the summit of Steens Mountain is on the right at 9733 ft. elevation; a radio facility on its very peak is serviced by what is far and away the "Highest Road in Oregon." The public can drive this road to about 9600 ft. ...In the image, in the far distance on the extreme left is the summit of the Pueblos at 8634 ft... I was standing near the site of Mickey Hot Springs, which surprised everyone several years ago by turning itself into a geyser!
Below is an image by my good friend Michel Hersen. It was taken perhaps 8 miles south of the picture above, looking back at the Sheepshead Mountains, with the Alvord Desert in the foreground....for more by Michel, click here. The naming of the Sheepshead Mountains is a sad chapter in Oregon history -- the original California Bighorn Sheep that inhabited the area were annihilated by the "sheep scab" brought in by the domestic sheep herds in the 1880s, and for many years thereafter the mountains were littered with the skulls of dead Bighorns. This event coincided with the migration of Basque peoples to the southeast corner of Oregon. They were commonly coming from Nevada and California to the south, and their population expansion into the region continued up into the 1920s and 30s, centering around Steens Mountain, Ontario and the Jordan Valley. They brought a rich cultural heritage. Euskaldunak.
* Note: the 175,000 acre Steens Wilderness is more than 3 times the size of the sadly-undersized Mt. Hood Wilderness (click link for commentary).
Visit Dave Anderson's truly artistic collection of Steens photography and informative notes at http://members.tripod.com/~SteensMountain/
For more information about hiking the Steens and the southeastern Oregon desert areas, please write: Desert Trail Association, P.O. Box 34, Madras, OR 97741. Their Website address is http://www.thedeserttrail.org ..They offer a newsletter and trips, with dues of $15 per year for an individual. ........The Desert Trail is a work in progress, the cousin of the Pacific Crest Trail, but my, oh my, is the country different!.. It's a fine slogan those sun-baked desert hikers utter: "Hike the Desert Trail"
Don't forget to visit the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), official guardians of the region.
The High Desert Committee of the Sierra Club has been very active in Steens issues and here's the link to them: HDC, Sierra Club... And don't forget to click here to see the Club's historic Steens Mascot, "Biggie Bighorn"
The climate of the High Desert in Southereastern Oregon is strikingly different than that of Western Oregon; one would hardly guess that both are in the same State, so fundamentally different they are! For both immediate and longer-term examination of the weather and climate of the Southeastern Oregon area, go to this Link: Oregon Climate Service (OCS). Once there, a wealth of information will await your exploration; a good way to get started is to explore the OCS site lookng for all categories of data for Burns, the County Seat of Harney County, at 4,140 ft elevation.
E-mailer: click for a direct link to communicate
with me about ordering custom Chromira prints of "Steens-Wildhorse"
or "Alvord-Steens." Steens-Wildhorse's print size is
12x18 inches, price is $32 plus shipping. Alvord-Steens size is
smaller, at 8x13, price is $26, plus shipping.
Two of this photographer's favorite guides to this remote corner of Oregon are the following: "Oregon's Great Basin Country," by Denzel and Nancy Ferguson, Gail Graphics, 1978, library of congress 78-66929.........A second resource is a hiking guide to the entire Oregon High Desert region, "Unobscured horizons, untravelled Trails," by Bruce Hayse, Olive Press, 1979, published with the assistance of the Oregon Chapter and Columbia Group of the Sierra Club. This latter resource is perhaps best located by contacting the Desert Trails Association, see bottom of this page. ....... An excellent pictorial resource for the Steens themselves is Charles Conkling's "coffee table" picture book entitled "Steens Mountain in Oregon's High Desert Country." Conkling's book may be ordered via Oregonphoto's Affiliate Bookstore status with Barnes and Noble. Just enter "Steens Mountain" into their search engine at the top of the page using the keyword search and you'll be right there, and their price is excellent.
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