Ten Springtime Adventures
Have the longer days and warmer temps led you to experience bouts of day-dreaming and window-gazing? Put that wanderlust to work! Plan on your trip to the desert, and get out there! With flowers blooming, birds migrating and roads drying out, spring is just about the best time to explore southeast Oregon. Here, we...
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Aaron Tani, Sage Society Member
“It feels good to support ONDA on a monthly basis, because I know they never stop supporting our public lands. ONDA works to help make our lands a better place for the future, and I feel like I’m a part of that every month with my support.”
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Species Spotlight: Mountain Mahogany
By LeeAnn Kriegh Trees live their lives on a different timescale than ours, so it helps to slow ourselves down to fully appreciate them. Certainly, a shrubby little tree like curlleaf mountain-mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius) isn’t going to catch our eye if we’re racing past along the trail. But take time for a closer look,...
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Ten Winter Adventures in the High Desert
Five for No Snow, Five for Snow. Winter in Oregon’s high desert can look and be quite different from one year to the next. In winter 2017, copious snowfall covered much of the sagebrush sea with feet of fun for skiers and snowshoers. The 2018 winter season lent itself more to hiking than snow...
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Craig Terry, ONDA member and stewardship volunteer
“The people I have had the privilege to share time with each season keep me volunteering again and again. Who else but those ONDA staff leaders would make fresh coffee at dawn each morning or pack a watermelon all day to serve as a reward under a juniper in a steep canyon?” Craig, who...
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Wildhorse Lake
Wildhorse Lake fills the bottom of a deep cirque with high surrounding walls on three sides that give way on one side to an open view of the horizon beyond. This treeless bowl is streaked with tiny creeks and even tinier rivulets that flow only after there’s been rain. You’ll start out by heading...
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Steens Mountain Summit
On your way to the top of Steens Mountain Summit trailhead, you’ll pass by two amazing viewpoints that involve short walks—Kiger Gorge and the East Rim—and we recommend stopping at both of these viewpoints and hiking up to the summit as well. The first stop along the drive is the Kiger Gorge Viewpoint parking...
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Oregon’s first desert wilderness
Steens Mountain: Oregon’s first desert wilderness On October 30, 2000, Congress passed the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act, finishing the work that had taken ONDA and the other members of the Steens-Alvord Coalition decades. Steens Mountain is a land of startling contrasts: dramatic u-shaped glacial valleys, groves of quaking aspen, uplands...
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