Steens Mountain Photo Gallery
"Long ago, massive internal pressure forced the east edge of the Steens upward along a fault line. The result was a 30-mile-long fault-block mountain with a spectacular and rugged east face that rises abruptly, one bertical mile above the Alvord Desert. The Steens is the largest fault-block mountain in the northern Great Basin,"(The Secret of the Steens. Bureau of Land Management.). Here are pictures of Kiger Gorge at Steens Mountain.
Steens Mountain is a 30 mile long fault block that rises 4,100 feet above the land to the east. The summit of Steens is 9,733 feet high. The road up to Steens is the highest road in the state.
Kiger Gorge is the deepest of the four U-shaped gorges in Steens Mountain.
"During the Ice Age, glaciers formed in the major stream beds on the mountain. These glaciers dug trenches about one-half mile deep, down to a layer of hard basalt," (The Secret of the Steens. Bureau of Land Management.).
"The famous notch in the east ridge of Kiger Gorge formed during a later glaciation when a small glacier in Mann Creek Canyon eroded through the ridgetop," (The Secret of the Steens. Bureau of Land Management.). (
There are wild flowers and creek or rivers running through the gorges. The little squiggle running through Kiger Gorge is a little creek.
It would be really cool to drive to Steens from the east so you could see how massive it is, but we didn't do that.
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