With winter subsiding, at least briefly, we venture further from home. This week we headed east, early enough to catch the sunrise at Fort Rock.
The Fremont Highway is a strip of two lane asphalt cutting across the northern corner of the Great Basin.
On the western side is a rock structure jutting out of the sage steppe. Fort Rock is an excellent backdrop for sunrise or sunset images, as well as a raptor nesting site.
An hour after sunrise we’ve captured images and drone footage and are back on OR 31 heading further east. Over Picture Rock Pass and down into Summer Lake valley. It’s the latter part of hunting season and there’s not a lot of birding at the wildlife refuge.
We press on eastward through Paisley to Valley Falls, where we turn north skirting the edge of Abert Lake. Oregon’s only saltwater lake, and one of two in the great basin, its eastern shore is shadowed by a 2500 foot exposed fault scarp. Abert Rim is one of the highest fault scarps in the US.
All this comes together for excellent landscape photo ops. There is renewed awareness of the damage drought and irrigation has brought to this important stop over for migrating birds. Recent legislation will focus research on ways to restore alkaline lakes. Hopefully, it’s not too late.
Starting in April and running into the fall, there are a series of different bird species using Abert as a nesting site, or for just a short stop over. Our trip was a chance to scout potential birding spots. To that end, the calendar has been updated with future excursions, which of course will get documented on these pages.
For now we swing farther north along the western edge of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. We hit Highway 20 outside Burns and then take that road back to Bend and complete the circle.