This post documents an unscheduled, off-the-cuff hike during the afternoon of our second day of five on our recent rafting trip down the Lower Owyhee River in far southeastern Oregon, four hours from our home in Bend.
By early afternoon, we had set our tent up at Middle Ryegrass and had eaten lunch, leaving us plenty of free time to explore. Laird and I grabbed our daypacks and headed up the trail behind the camp site to see what there was to see. We had no idea that this trail coupled with a mile or two of bushwhacking would lead us to one of the most phenomenal geologic formations that I've ever seen. Once I got back to civilization, I discovered that this eroded formation of alternating layers of chocolate-colored lava and linen-colored lake sediment is called Pruitt's Castle.
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Pruitt's Castle
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In less than ten minutes, our walk took us to the high ground immediately behind our camp site where we could look up, down, and across the river, an unusual perspective for this trip that we had been taking at water level, looking up at everything, our vistas largely confined by canyon walls. Not satisfied with a ten-minute walk, we kept heading downriver following a distinct trail.
As we walked, several really interesting hoodoos or spires came into view, looking kind of like the sandcastles that kids make on the beach by dribbling wet sand through their fingers. And just beyond them, we saw our first view of Pruitt's Castle, still long in the distance. In time, we came to a barbed wire fence. I wanted to push on to see Pruitt's Castle, so up and over we went. From the fence to the castle, there is no trail and we bushwhacked through the sagebrush.
As we neared Pruitt's castle, a large chasm appeared between us and it. We managed to skirt this deep chasm, a natural amphitheater, to the west, at times following a game trail that showed the tracks of quite a large deer. Ultimately, we picked a point on the rim of the chasm and sat to toast the glorious view with a beer.
One thing that is hard to pick up on these photos is the red basalt lava flows across the river. It appears that some time after the river carved a canyon, more basalt flowed to the edge of the canyon and tumbled over the edge. We see that in places back home along the Deschutes, but that lava is black, not iron oxide red such as this.
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| Our Camp from the Ridge |
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| First View of Pruitt's Castle |
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| Hoodoos Foreground, Pruitt's Castle Background |
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| More Hoodoos |
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Interesting Lava Formation
Looking Like the Top of Columnar Basalt |
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| Layers of Lava and Sedimentary Rock Form Pruitt's Castle |
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| Cheers to a Great Afternoon! |
At the top of the canyon, the ground was carpeted in large part by clumps of phlox, blooming pink and white. In spite of this beauty, as we made our way higher and further downstream, we found ourselves in something of a disappointingly ugly area. I say disappointing because the ground was littered with three scourges of the west, three noxious invasive weeds: Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), Bur Buttercup (Ranunculus testiculatus), and Russian Thistle aka Tumbleweed (Salsola tragus).
Beyond this ugly zone, however, we got back out into a large sagebrush flat and this proved to be a nice place to find wildflowers in bloom. Here I got to see a Bitterroot, a plant that I have never seen before, but one that I really had hoped to find, although this is a bit late in the season. None of the Antelope Bitterbrush that we had seen since Rome had been in bloom; however, near Pruitt's Castle, it is in full bloom. That just goes to show how important microclimate is.
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Abundant Creeping Phlox, Phlox sp.
Of 8 Local Species, This is Likely Sagebrush Phlox, P. aculeata |
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| Matted Buckwheat, Eriogonum caespitosum |
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| Matted Buckwheat Close-up |
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| Desert Paintbrush, Castilleja angustifolia syn. C. chromosa |
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| Sand Lily, Leucocrinum montanum |
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| Tolmie's Onion, Allium tolmiei |
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| My First Ever Bitterroot, Lewisia rediviva |
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| Rayless Shaggy Fleabane, Erigeron aphanactis |
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| Antelope Bitterbrush, Purshia tridentata |
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| Sagebrush False Dandelion, Nothocalais troximoides |
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| Parsnip-flower Wild Buckwheat, Eriogonum heracleoides |
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| Highly Toxic Death Camas, Toxicoscordion venenosum |
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| Small Bee on Snake River Cryptantha, Cryptantha spiculifera |
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| A Milkvetch, Astragalus sp. |
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| Munro's Globe Mallow, Sphaeralcea munroana |
Our afternoon hike proved to be a wonderful diversion and gave us the opportunity to see both amazing geology and beautiful flowers. We would return to camp just in time for Happy Hour.
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