Hells Canyon National Recreation Area
Oregon
From 9,300-foot alpine peaks to desertlike river bottoms some 7,000 feet below, Hells Canyon National Recreation Area contains an amazing variety of elevation and environment. Hells Canyon itself is the deepest canyon in North America. You can pedal down trails that crisscross open, grassy benches and thickly timbered draws; hike along steep, narrow trails that were blasted into sheer rock bluffs; raft through churning, frothy white water with monolithic mountains rising up on all sides.
These extremes of elevation create diversity in both the plant and the wildlife communities. Surroundings range from gentle hillsides colored by clarkia with peregrine falcons flying overhead to rocky bluffs from which spring prickly pear cacti, poison ivy, and rattlesnakes. Hells Canyon hosts the largest free-roaming elk herd in the United States, as well as bighorn sheep, deer, and mountain goats; areas of rugged terrain also offer ideal habitat for the chukar partridge. Within Hells Canyon you'll find old-growth boreal forests of ponderosa pine, Engelmann spruce, western larch, and Douglas fir—not to mention rare plants such as MacFarlane's four-o'clock and some of the most extensive intact native grasslands remaining in the region. In fact, there are 24 species of plants at Hells Canyon that are found nowhere else on earth.
For the best of Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, try these GORP recommendations:
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