Crack in the Ground: Hike into one of Oregon’s unique geologic wonders
SALEM – The name is perfect, even while it dramatically undersells this geologic wonder in remote southeast Oregon.
It’s called Crack in the Ground, a volcanic fissure 70 feet deep and 2 miles long that splits a landscape of sagebrush and juniper about 7 miles north of Christmas Valley.
As the name suggests, it is, basically, a crack in the ground. But to hike inside feels like entering a subterranean labyrinth, where the air is 20 degrees cooler and the walls are so narrow you can stretch out your arms and touch both sides.
It’s a bucket list hike on par with any of Oregon’s unique wonders, and it feels a lot more intimate.
It’s also a rugged jungle gym for kids or adults – with moments of major challenge. At the same time, it’s a fairly short hike with easy ways around the challenging parts.
Most of all, it makes for a fun day in one of Oregon’s most remote regions.
Where is Crack in the Ground?
The hike is a long way from Oregon’s population centers, nestled in remote desert 90 minutes from La Pine and 3½ hours from Eugene.
My suggestion is to set up a road trip to the region and make this one stop. Nearby highlights include Summer Lake, Hager Mountain and Fort Rock State Park. If you’re hungry, the Cowboy Dinner Tree has my vote for Oregon’s best restaurant.
Make sure to peek outside at night. Most of the region is part of the newly established Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary, home to some of the best star-watching in the world.
There are plenty of reasons to visit. Just make sure you stop at Crack in the Ground.
Getting there
The trip really begins in the unincorporated town of Christmas Valley, population 1,313. Just outside of town, turn left at a pointer and follow Crack in the Ground road a bumpy 7.2 miles of washboard gravel to a large and obvious trailhead. It’s a fairly famous place and when I visited over spring break, the parking lot was almost full but there wasn’t an overwhelming number of other hikers.
The hike
The actual hike begins on a wide and dusty trail, leading 0.2 miles through sage and juniper to the mouth of the first and most impressive part of the crack. The trail drops in and down you go, into a hallway of multicolored stone.
The sensation is similar to entering a cave and on hot days the temperature can drop by 20 degrees.
It wasn’t that hot during our visit, and the cool temperatures ensured a layer of icy snow that made hiking slippery in places.
It’s often a hazard well into May, according to the Bureau of Land Management. It’s only an issue for a short part of the hike – the deepest, darkest part of the crack – but it does make things tricky. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to pack a pair of micro spikes during winter, especially if you hike in the morning.
It was still worth it, as the hike ducks and climbs past spectacular rock formations, including some that seemed to be hanging just overhead.
What’s interesting about hiking through the crack is that there are, for lack of a better term, segments.
The trail traverses through the first and most impressive part of the crack before popping back out to a saddle. At this point, there is a bench and the trail splits. One pathway stays above, on the rim of the crack. The other dives back down into the next segment.
This happens about seven times by my count.
It doesn’t take long into the second segment to see why there are options for walking around. The Crack is almost totally blocked, but for a little scramble climb and wormhole. I watched a group of kids and dad make it through, so I tried myself, climbing up the rock and squeezing through a narrow opening.
It was fun. But probably not for everyone.
After another saddle, I entered the third segment of the crack and found an even steeper blockade. This one was so steep that it didn’t look safe to climb on the outside of the rock. Following some footprints, I squeezed my way into the blockade and wormed my way up through narrow cracks to the top. My arms and legs got nicked up, but again, it was really fun.
The rest of the segments didn’t have any climbs nearly as challenging but the hike stayed just as interesting, taking you up, down and around this geologic oddity way out in the middle of nowhere.
After the seventh segment, there doesn’t seem to be any crack left to explore, so you can follow the upper trail back to the beginning of the crack, only this time hiking above.
At one point, I heard voices of a frustrated group below, who had run into the second blockade.
“Don’t try to climb it,” I shouted. “Go up through the middle of it.”
“Um, thank you voice from above!” someone from the group yelled.
Giant juniper
The trail above the crack was nice in its own respect, through sagebrush and some of the largest juniper trees I’ve seen. The air smelled delightful, the way only the desert can after a late March rainfall.
Eventually, we arrived back at the entrance to the first segment and the trail back to the trailhead.
The entire hike is only about 2 miles but seems far longer with all the scrambling. The trek can be as easy or difficult as you want, but it would be easy to get hurt, too, either from icy snow or the climbs.
How did the crack form?
There’s a detailed geologic explanation for how Crack in the Ground formed that you can read at: bit.ly/3PRs5Jw from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. But the simplest explanation is that thousands of years ago, the nearby Four Craters cinder cones erupted, emptying an underground magma chamber and causing the ground to sink, which caused a rupture or crack along the edge of the valley.
“Normally, fissures like this one are filled with soil and rock by the processes of erosion and sedimentation,” says the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the site. “However, because it is located in such an arid region, very little filling has occurred and Crack-in-the-Ground exists today nearly as it did shortly after its formation thousands of years ago.”