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Strawberry Wilderness

The Strawberry Wilderness in eastern Oregon's Grant County is a rugged, pint-sized desert mountain range that can actually support a full week's backpacking trip, though few people visit it for that long. Cool streams flow in the desert canyons, you find cowboy graffiti carved into cottonwood trees, bears amble on hillsides and big horn sheep romp on the high ridges. Much of the forested area has been burned over in recent years and is strangely beautiful.

Strawberry Mountain is a long but straightforward hike; you top out on a scree-covered ridge where a fire watch tower used to sit at 9,038 feet. Strawberry Lake and Little Strawberry Lake provide good back country camp sites.

all text and images © 2005-06 by Bob Keefer
no reproduction allowed in any form without written permission