Steens Mountain rises fifty miles across southeastern Oregon’s high desert, a single tilted block of ancient lava that lifts almost a mile above the flat basin at its feet.
Geologists count more than forty separate lava flows in its cliffs, laid down between fourteen and seventeen million years ago, with some layers over a thousand feet thick.
On its east side the land simply drops away into the Alvord Desert, a dry lakebed sitting more than five thousand feet below the summit. The contrast is almost unheard of in Oregon: alpine tundra on top, bone dry desert floor at the bottom, all within a few miles of each other.
Steens Mountain Wilderness protects over 170,000 acres up here, and a 52 mile gravel loop road climbs to the highest point you can legally drive to in the state. Wild horses, bighorn sheep, and golden eagles share the mountain, and Congress locked in its protection for good back in 2000.
I saw this and said that doesn’t look like it. The commenters agreed. A great looking spot but is it even real with AI slop now.
It is so lame and annoying to see everything fake now.