It’s Christmas All Year Round At Crack-In-The-Ground In Christmas Valley Oregon

This last spring break, I took a road trip down through Oregon along I-5, into California to visit Lava Beds National Park and then back up towards Bend and home for a long loop. Before I got to Bend, I took a detour into Eastern Oregon to check out Christmas Valley and a hike I had heard about there.

Crack-In-The-Ground is on land managed by the BLM or Bureau of Land Management but is the ancestral land of the Northern Paiute, Cayuse, Yahooskin and Umatilla tribes. It is an ancient volcanic feature over 2 miles long and 70 feet deep in places. A hike down in the fissure is possible because the area is so arid and the cleft has not filled in with sand and debris like normal fissures would be over time. The draw to the hike is that normally in the summer you can find temperatures 20 degrees cooler than the land above.

Of course, I went in spring when there was still snow on the ground in places and freezing temperatures at night!

I arrived at the trailhead around 5pm with bright blue skies. There didn’t seem to be current trip reports on Oregon Hikers Field Guide (the state’s closest proximity to Washington Trails Association) and Oregon Hikers and Climbers on Facebook didn’t have anything recent either. I was going mostly off GPS and what I could find the BLM website.

After a short walk, I came to an area with a picnic table and trail register. There were recent entries here, at least. Notice the comment, “We prayed a lot”. I will soon understand what they were talking about.

The entrance to the fissure was .3 miles from the trailhead and looked mundane enough. I could see on the map that this was a loop of sorts so I checked out the mouth one side first.

The trail was interesting at first as it took me deeper and deeper into the fissure.

But it wasn’t long before I could see what the party from Issaquah had been praying about, the compact snow on the floor of the fissure was a solid sheet of ice. I am pretty sure hiking boots would have been useless but thankfully I was prepared and had my microspikes with me. They were quickly put on but even still, that ice was going to make things slow going.

I was first intimidated by this drop so I went back out to look at the other side of the loop but that much more of a scramble and being by myself not worth the risk.

I returned to the previous spot and figured out how to use the exposed rock to navigate down. It wasn’t pretty and I have no video, sorry. It was all hands on deck. Here’s a picture looking back at the drop…

From there and for the next half mile, it was a “fun” adventure navigating the ice and rock to pop back out of the fissure when it came back out to the surface.

It was nice to be on soil! I looked around for a while to see where the fissure continued but it again was a bit too adventurous with all the snow and ice for my solo self so I walked up to a trail that followed above the fissure.

I was able to do a pretty nice loop with views out at the desert along with the jagged rock of the fissure. When I got back to where I had come out, I crossed over and followed a trail above the crack that took me back to the trailhead for about a 1.75 mile trek that lasted 1.25 hours. You can find the whole track here.

This was a super fun hike that I am glad I went out of the way to find. I did sleep in my car at the trailhead that night. there was a privy and the sunset was gorgeous.

And as a side note, the small town of Christmas Valley was a quaint visit all on its own. Not only did the streets have Christmas themed names, but Mrs. Claus runs the local coffee stand. It even snowed the next day for me!

And the bonus? There was a yarn store and they even had some yarn that I had been looking for to make a shawl pattern.

I hope to go back in the summer when it is warmer, there is no snow, and I can scramble the entire length of the Crack-In-The-Wall. The hubby loves to rockhound and there are some really great areas for it in Christmas Valley!

Directions: From the town of Christmas Valley, Oregon, head east on the Christmas Valley Highway for approximately 1 mile. Turn north (left) onto Crack-in-the-Ground Road and continue for about 7 miles, being sure to turn left onto Lava Craters Road, following signs to Crack in the Ground. The road can be rough in places. There is a primitive campground nearby, as well as a lookout on Green Mountain. You can also find current conditions here.

Editor’s Note: if you want to know how my shawl turned out, it is one of my current favorites!