Steens Mountain, knife country
 

Here are some pics from the Oregon Steens Mountain trip, August 2005.

Knifemakers Bob Lum, Chris Reeve and myself present in a camp with 7 other guys with varied interests. I'll get with Bob to see what other pics we might have but here are some snapshots starting with a sunrise over camp.

These are a few shots looking over the Steens east rim taken from 9500 ft. elevation.
It's one vertical mile from the spot the pics are taken to the high desert floor down below.
The big light colored area in the valley is the Alvord Desert.

Last pic is of a couple of the guys looking for bighorn sheep.

Kiger Gorge
 

This is of the Kiger Gorge in the Steens. It's the largest glacial carved gorge in the United States. That's my son standing there and I told him to stay away from that patch of snow because it's about 1/4 mile vertical down to the next stop after that.

The head wall is over three thousand feet above the floor, at the top of the gorge.

The lower end of this is home of the famous wild horses that are named after the Kiger.

Beautiful country

Nature at its best! Thanks for posting Bill.

Mr. Harsey, beautiful photos!!!

FrontSight

Awesome pictures Mr. Harsey! Our Country is breathtakingly beautiful.

Wild Horse canyon and Rain
 

The first image is looking straight south down Wild Horse Canyon, if you look careful Wild Horse lake can be seen in the lower right corner. It's 1000 vertical feet below where pic was taken. The lake has Lohontan Cutthroat trout.

The mountains in the farthest distance to the left are the Pueblos, named for the folks that lived there. Yes there are Pueblo sites in Oregon.

Pic No. 2 is looking to the west under the thunderstorms and walls of rain.

Nice pics, but where are the knives?

In our pockets until needed.

Mr Harsey the pictures are magnificent... absolutely breath-taking. Thank you for posting them.

Great Photo's!

Harsey, Lum, Reeve. That is some scary talent, a camp site with a very deep skill set.

Nice pics Mr. Harsey! Thank you for sharing.

Great pics, great Americans, great times!

Thanks Bill!

TR

Great shots. Thanks Bill.

Your welcome folks,
I just got back from Bob Lum's house and he put some images on a CD for me. Bob is a real photographer who knows what he's doing.

Here is some evidence that Mr. Chris Reeve was in camp, photo courtesy Bob Lum. That's Chris's motorpickle he rode in from Boise on.

Here is a much better image of the Kiger Gorge taken by Bob Lum with a very nice wide angle lens. The green "brush" in the bottom of the gorge is 30-40 foot tall aspen trees.
Pic No. 2 is a vista looking west over the Little Blitzen gorge in the Steens, elevation about 9000 ft. in both images.
Thanks Bob!

Another nice pic by the knifemaker Bob Lum, two of our guys work their way down to Wild Horse lake to catch some Lahontan trouts. They are still a half mile away from the water.
Thanks again Bob.

Mr. Harsey and Mr. Lum,

Those are terrific pictures ! Thanks.

Beautiful photo, but I want to see photos of some fish! :munchin

Flies, I assume?

Definitely some very pretty country Bill. Do you ever make it to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge? We are friends of the Station.

RL,
Yes the whole crew fishes with flies. Most of the guys favor small sparse tied flies and i do well with robust floating deer hair patterns like "Humpys". I'll check for a fish picture.

Hollis,
No I didn't and haven't gotten down to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge proper but have walked a few miles where the Little Blitzen River starts becoming what I presume to be the very beginning of the refuge (lake) because it was marked, uh, no more fishin' beyond this point "wildlife refuge".
The birds are plenty around there. We've seen Golden Eagles up in the mountains and more hawks than I can identify. Plenty of antelopes, mule deers and coyotes too. The cougar are doing real good up there so one wants to kinda pay attention when in traveling the aspen stands that give them good cover.

Cougars are doing well on the coast range too, sence they banned hunting them with dogs. I had a cayote on my property the other day, at first glance I thought he was a domestic dog, he was one fat cayote. We have lots of little critters for them to feed on. Their pelt is not as nice as those in Eastern Oregon. On one trip to Malheur Station, we saw two juvenile bald headed eagles fighting. They would lock onto each other in flight and start plumeting to earth. I guess sort of a game playing "chicken". They would release before they hit ground.

Very nice pictures. I just love you could walk for weeks through the US bush and see very few (or none if you took the right route) signs of civilisation.

They recently found a 400 foot waterfall in California, of all places, that few, if any, knew existed.

TR

Beautiful pictures, Mr Harsey. Thanks for sharing.

Can you imagine being among the first immigrants, exploring this great land with weapon in hand? Must have been a feeling...

Now that is amazing. Stories like that almost make me want to whip out the Indiana Jones DVDs and start plotting an expedition to find a lost city full of gold and loose women.

Read about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Ranks right up with the Conquistadores (without the enslavement and looting part).

TR

Near Astoria is Fort Klatsop. It is a living history museum that portrays Lewis and Clark wintering over in that area. Also another excellent book, "Journal of a Trapper" by Osborn Russell. He was not a very educated man, but extremely will written. Deals with the Oregon Territory circa 1830, Oregon City to the Yellowstone.

Martin,
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose is another book to add to your growing Americana reading list.

As we say over here, "The Interest-Brownies are making notes."

Martin

PS. Brownie... A general purpose Santa Claus. I hope it's the right translation. DS.

wow
 

That's some gorgeous scenery, anyways, I got bored like I so often do and decided to try and remove some of the gray film from my favorite shot

here are the results, i only posted 2 pics to save bandwidth, the rest can be done really easily, all you do is go to image -> adjustments -> brightness/contrast and hue/saturation and play with it a little bit (in Adobe Photshop 8.0CS that is)

It looks like the scenery from City Slickers now that I think about it, nice location + pics