One of Oregon's protected areas, the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area is an incredible 500,000 acres of one of the nations most unique landscapes. It's 170,000 acres of wilderness is a masterpiece holding deep aspen groves and open meadow, glacial-cut valleys and sheer cliffs, lakes and mountain streams so clear it's unreal. Native red-band trout, bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer, antelope, sagehens, wilshorses and over 300 species of birds call this area home.

Steens Mountain is nearly 10,000 feet high and over 30 miles long, an enormous fault block that rose up millions of years ago to cut a bold line between the greener western slope of the Blitzen Valley and the Alvord Desert to the east. Here you find the Kiger Little Blitzen and Big Indian Gorges, all formed by prehistoric glaciers, as well as the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge at its western base.