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| Hiking | 3.02 Miles |
1,135 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.02 Miles | | | |
| 1,135 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Nostalgia.
I met my friend, Jared, at his sister's house in Sisters, Oregon. (That's always a fun one to explain!)
We left early the next morning for Steens Mountain Wilderness. This is a special place in southeastern Oregon, on the NV border, that we had both been to before. In high school, our cross country team came out to Steens Mountain for a week long training camp. For Oregon, it's "high elevation" with a summit elevation of 9,738ft. At the time, running 20-30 miles/day off trail at elevation was challenging and fun. Jared and I wanted to go back to the Steens area and explore some of our favorite places.
We setup camp in the afternoon and then made our way to the Wildhorse Lake Trail, which starts at the true summit of the mountain. We enjoyed the amazing weather and cool glacier views on the descent down to Wildhorse Basin. As the shadows lengthened, the lighting over the lake grew worse, preventing me from capturing the lake the way I had remembered it nine years prior.
The trail down to the lake is steep up top. This year's high snow volume had left much of the upper trail covered in ice, or just slippery from runoff. Eventually, the trail leveled out a bit, and we crossed one more snow field.
There are some amazing views of the Alvord Desert on the descent to the lake.
This are was settled by Basque immigrants. They said it reminded them of the Pyrenees Mountains. I can see the resemblance. |
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| - there's nothing like finding Water in the Desert - |
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