Smith Rock State Park

Smith Rock sits in the high desert of central Oregon, about half an hour northeast of Bend, and it arrives without warning. You drive across flat sagebrush plateau, the kind of unremarkable scrubland that fills much of the interior West, and then the ground simply opens. The Crooked River has cut a deep gorge through ancient volcanic ash welded into a soft golden-orange rock called tuff, and the walls rise nearly a thousand feet straight out of the riverbed. I have seen a lot of dramatic geology and this one still made me say something undignified out loud.

I am not a climber. I want to be honest about that, because Smith Rock is, above all else, a climbing place — this is widely cited as the birthplace of modern American sport climbing, where in the 1980s a climber named Alan Watts started bolting routes up the tuff and effectively invented the discipline as it is now practised. On any decent-weather morning the walls are dotted with climbers, and the river-level trail is a slow parade of people walking back to the car with ropes coiled over their shoulders and that particular expression of happy exhaustion.

Walking the river and the ridge

For those of us who keep our feet on the ground, the hiking is superb. The park has a loop that follows the Crooked River along the base of the cliffs — flat, easy, shaded in places, with the rock towering overhead and the green river sliding past. Lia is steadier on her feet than I am, and she talked me into the harder option: Misery Ridge, a steep switchbacking climb up and over the spine of the formation. The name is honest. It is a relentless grind up a sun-exposed face, and I stopped more than once to pretend I was admiring the view.

But the top delivers. From the ridge you look down on Monkey Face, a freestanding three-hundred-foot pillar of tuff that genuinely resembles a face in profile, with climbers occasionally visible hanging off its overhanging mouth like very small, very brave insects. The descent on the far side drops you back to the river, and the loop closes through a quieter stretch where the canyon narrows and the only sound is water and the occasional clink of climbing hardware echoing off the walls.

The desert light and the wildlife

What I remember most is the light. The tuff is a pale gold that goes molten orange at sunrise and sunset, and because this is high desert the air is dry and clear and the colours are almost aggressive. We went up early one morning specifically for it, sharing the trail with a few climbers hauling gear, and watched the first sun hit the top of Monkey Face while the river was still in blue shadow. It was cold enough to see our breath and warm enough by the time we descended to want the shade.

The park is also full of life despite looking, at first, like dead rock. Golden eagles and prairie falcons nest on the cliffs — some routes close seasonally to protect them — and we watched a pair of river otters working the Crooked River below the bridge, completely indifferent to the climbers above. There are rattlesnakes too, which the signs remind you of frequently, though we saw only a lizard the size of my hand sunning itself on a warm rock.

When to go

Spring and autumn are ideal — the high desert summer is genuinely hot and the exposed rock turns brutal by midday, while winter brings ice and cold. Come for sunrise or the last hours before dark, both for the light and to avoid the crowds, which can be heavy on summer weekends. There is no shade for long stretches, so bring more water than you think you need. Day-use parking fills early. Bend, half an hour away, makes the obvious base.