Driving down the barren valley, we were suddenly awestruck by the magnitude of Steens Mountain emerging from the sagebrush.

The cloud formations lingering on the flanks of the 9,670-foot tall fault-block mountain in southeastern Oregon softened the knife-edged ridges which were stippled in contrasting snow and black basalt.

The mountain abruptly terminated in the desert surrounding us, 5,000 feet below the summit. A cluster of white-tailed bucks watched us from across barbed wire as I took photos.

We were tired and travel worn, but as we pulled down the rough dirt road and parked on the edge of the Alvord Desert, I knew the adventure I had sought out was finally being realized.

I originally read an article about the Alvord Desert in a doctor’s office. An insignificant article I pretended to read because I had nothing else to do, but the photos caught my eye, and the description drew me in.

The Alvord Desert is a dry lake bed, or playa, on the eastern flank of Steens Mountain, the tallest mountain in eastern Oregon. The article claimed the hot springs along the edge of the playa, which stretches nearly 12 miles down the valley toward Nevada, were some of the most remote in the Northwest. I was intrigued.

The thought of travelling there percolated in the recesses of my mind for over 10 years, though, before becoming a reality.

Over those years I found people who had been to the Alvord. They emphasized how remote the Alvord was. They told me to: take extra gas, take extra water, take a camera. I researched the Alvord on the internet and noticed as people slowly began to find this remote valley.

When I decided the time had come to make the pilgrimage myself, I wanted a singular adventure. I wanted solitude. I wanted to experience it as if I was the first to discover it, so I decided to travel there in the middle of winter.

We left Coeur d’Alene around 4 a.m., drove to the airport in a snowstorm, flew south over a solid mantle of clouds, and geared up in Boise before driving nearly five hours through sagebrush to the Alvord Desert. By the time the sun set over Steens Mountain, we were exhausted.

My wife Karen and I had rented an SUV from the Boise Airport, something big enough so we could sleep in the back of it out on the playa, under the vast high desert stars.

We crawled into our sleeping bags and set our alarms for later in the evening, so we could wake for the stars. By the time our alarms went off, though, the desert cold had set in. It was all we could do to pull ourselves from our barely warm goose down cocoons.

The cold was brutal. I had been checking the weather every day for weeks and felt confident that a zero-degree mummy bag and some extra blankets would be warm enough, but I was wrong.

Those stars were amazing. I have seldom been in a place where the stars filled the entire 180-degree arc of the sky, or were as bright.

My uncle once took me hiking on the North Fork of the Clearwater. That first evening camped at the trailhead, the Milky Way rolled across the sliver of sky wedged between canyon walls as I lay transfixed with my head sticking out the tent. The stars over the Alvord Desert were like an entire orchestra playing in the night sky as compared to a solitary horn on the Clearwater.

But we didn’t last long. The cold soon chased us back into the SUV and Karen had the genius idea to start the truck and let it warm up a bit.

So began a long night of trying to sleep until the cold became unbearable, then warming up the truck, then trying to sleep again.

Karen grumbled often in her semi-sleep state that whoever had rated our zero-degree sleeping bags had obviously never spent a winter night in them.

After an eternity in a half-sleep/hypothermic state, the eastern sky began to turn an indigo blue. I started the truck and began defrosting our icy nest. After quickly throwing on every layer of clothing I had brought, I opened the door and reluctantly faced the dawn.

The first order of business was to relieve the intense pressure on my bladder. Then, I busted out several jumping jacks to warm myself.The morning colors were spectacular as I hastily set up my tripod and began taking pictures.

In the weeks before our trip I had reached out to some people who rockhounded in the Owyhees. A common warning I received was to watch out for the Owyhee mud which would make all dirt roads impassable after a rain.

Karen contacted Paul Davis, owner of the Alvord Hot Springs, before our trip. He also cautioned against driving on the playa after it rained because the mud became a “gumbo” which stopped vehicles, leaving them stranded until the mud dried again.

I now understood the full depth of these warnings as I went to move the tripod and accidentally stepped into the quagmire created by the contents of my bladder, freshly relieved onto the cracked surface of the playa. I instantly realized my mistake as my right boot disappeared into the ground. I groaned and cursed at myself as I tugged it free. Having flown 300 miles and driven over four hours from Boise to see this sunrise, I sucked it up and shuffled across the morning desert, one foot several pounds heavier than the other.

When the morning colors began to fade, and the cold became unbearable, I rushed back into the now warm vehicle, ditched my muddy boot outside and crawled back into my sleeping bag. When next I looked out the windows of the SUV, the sky had turned gray with high clouds dragging across Steens.

After a camp stove breakfast, and discovering that the six-pack of beer I had left outside was frozen solid, we rallied and drove the quarter-mile to the Alvord Hot Springs where we enjoyed having the pools to ourselves.

While at the hot springs I talked with Paul Davis about his decision to commercialize the hot springs in 2013. He told me the hot springs had been becoming more popular thanks to the internet, and people were trashing the spot. He strongly considered closing it to the public but decided instead to minimally improve it and charge a small fee to soak. Eventually, military-style bunkhouses were brought in to accommodate visitors who wanted to stay overnight.

As we left the hot springs, we had to decide the next part of our adventure. The sky was continuing to darken with the hint of snow on the wind, and I was concerned about being unable to drive out onto the playa after the storm came.

We decided to race back to Boise, hopefully staying ahead of the approaching snowstorm. While briefly sidetracked by random dirt roads which wound through the sagebrush to hidden valleys where Steens Mountain sharply met the valley floor, the ever-increasing weather soon chased us back to Boise.

The next afternoon, Karen struck up a conversation with a guy named Andy in the Boise airport as we waited for our flights. He was upset to hear that the Alvord Hot Springs had become commercialized and decried the loss of an area where he had enjoyed adventures in his youth.

We told him that though they were not the unknown treasure which I originally read about in the doctor’s office, they still felt remote, that once we left Highway 95 near Burns Junction, we didn’t see another car until we reached the hot springs, 90 minutes away.

Actually, we saw just one other truck on the road the entire time we were at the Alvord and we had the playa to ourselves for as far as I could see in any direction. While there were a few people at the hot springs when we drove by on our first evening, the next morning we had the pools to ourselves.

The Alvord had given me exactly what I had envisioned: desolation, beauty, and adventure.