I probably drove past Boulder Creek a few dozen times before I knew about its gorge.

Which is to say, that it actually has one.

And I could have driven past another 50 times and been just as ignorant after the last trip as the first.

Except one fall day, a couple years ago, I finally got out of the rig and walked.

But even so, I might again have missed this minor yet compelling gouge in the ground had I veered a slightly different direction.

It happens, though, that when I’m hiking in modest topography — which the topography around Virtue Flat, about 8 miles east of Baker City, decidedly is — I tend, after wandering around on flat ground, to end up, almost without realizing what I’m doing, following the course of anything that even vaguely resembles a stream channel.

Such was the case with Boulder Creek.

It is, to be fair, shown on most maps.

But as anyone knows who has tramped around much in the arid sagelands that extend from Baker Valley most of the way to the Snake River, maps, when it comes to watercourses, can mislead.

When you see a creek depicted, and named, on a paper map, you tend to imagine, at a minimum, a trickle of water.

But many of the named streams in this part of Baker County might flow only briefly, and then only in those rare years with a copious snowpack that melts rapidly during a spring rainstorm, or perhaps in the immediate aftermath of a cloudburst spawned by a summer thunderstorm.

Yet though this land is desiccated today, the handiwork of water over previous millennia is apparent in the many gulches and draws. Some of these are true canyons, albeit at a miniature scale compared with, say, Hells Canyon or the gorges carved by such substantial rivers as the Minam or the Imnaha or even the Powder, which below Thief Valley Reservoir meanders through a considerable chasm.

But in the gentle terrain between Highway 86 and the Powder-Burnt River divide — the spine of high ground that was the last major obstacle for Oregon Trail emigrants before they reached the Powder River Valley — water has left only shallow scratches, often too puny to shelter anything much larger than a coyote.

This, at any rate, is what I thought of Boulder Creek.

If I had ever thought of it at all, which I don’t recall doing until I first blundered into its gorge.

Since then I’ve returned a few times, and on each occasion I appreciated anew its unexpected presence, so unlike the unremarkable terrain that surrounds it.

My wife, Lisa, and I went there on Christmas afternoon. It was the kind of winter’s day in which the color spectrum seems peculiarly stunted, consisting of nondescript whites and grays, a day when the idea of a vibrant, gaudy green or a shocking yellow feels like the fragment of a fever dream rather than something nature can conjure.

But we didn’t begrudge the dour backdrop because it was also a rare winter’s day when the wind was so gentle it could be ignored. Quite a lot of wind passes through these parts — and not only during winter — and I have several times been driven back to the shelter of a car by its force and its chill.

This stretch of Boulder Creek, just upstream from its confluence with Ruckles Creek, is part of a significant swath of public land, although there are private parcels to the south and west, so make sure to consult a BLM map. The gorge itself, though, is completely on public ground.

To get there, drive east of Baker City on Highway 86 for about 5 miles to Ruckles Creek Road, which is marked by a sign to the BLM’s Virtue Flat Off Highway Vehicle area.

Turn right and follow the gravel road, which is maintained all winter, for about 6.7 miles. Just beyond a ranch on the right, turn right onto Love Reservoir Road.

This road is not graveled, so it can get awfully muddy during winter thaws, and it’s not routinely plowed of snow, either. I returned alone on Dec. 27, unsatisfied with the photographs I took on Christmas Day, and the mild southerly winds that day had done away with most of the snow and left in its place a glutinous mud that I feared, for a few moments, was going to mire my Toyota FJ Cruiser despite its formidable four-wheel drive traction.

The Cruiser, despite being shod in studded snow tires rather than the mudders it wears from spring through fall, pulled itself out. But it was hardly an ideal day for getting around, whether in a rig or on foot. My boots, I suspect, will bear traces of Boulder Creek’s muck for many months.

If the Love Reservoir road is passable, follow it for about three-tenths of a mile to another road — this one more of a path — that heads south through the sagebrush toward a minor butte.

Either park at the junction or drive a few hundred yards to where another, similarly nondescript, road branches off to the right.

Hike the first road, which continues due south and is bordered on the west by a barbed wire fence. This road climbs steeply for a short distance, then levels off about a mile on. When the road enters an area mainly devoid of sagebrush, veer to the right and walk due west. The ground slopes gently to Boulder Creek, which at this point is only about 20 vertical feet lower than the plateau.

Then simply follow the gully to the north, back toward where you parked. Depending on whether there’s snow, it might be a bit easier to stay on the east side, where a network of cattle trails wends through the scattered sagebrush.

Lisa and I started our hike with snowshoes but we soon discarded them as the snow, softened by the thaw that started on Christmas, immediately packed into bottom of the snowshoes. Walking with what amounts to a snowball stuck to your boot sole is unpleasant.

The snow was only about 5 inches deep anyway, so it wasn’t hard going without snowshoes.

Hiking along Boulder Creek for most of its length isn’t exciting. But just after you reach a barbed wire fence — the top strand isn’t very high, so it’s not terribly taxing to climb over — the gorge begins and the walk becomes much more compelling.

To be clear, Boulder Creek is nothing like as dramatic, topographically speaking, as dozens of places in Northeastern Oregon.

At its deepest point it’s probably no more than 15 feet from the bottom to the rimrock.

The lure to me is the surprise. Unless you’re either standing in the gorge, or right at its rim, there’s no indication that there’s anything here but the typical gentle rift that wouldn’t even be depicted on a topographic map.

Boulder Creek’s gorge is diminutive in length as well as height. The term “gorge” can only be reasonably applied to a section of the stream maybe 300 or 400 yards long.

Yet within that span the landscape, so placid and humdrum otherwise, suddenly turns quite tortuous and rugged, with boulders the size of a sedan and 90-degree twists.

It’s the sort of spot where the gang would spring an ambush in a Louis L’Amour novel — a place with a wealth of nooks and crannies to conceal hard men with Winchesters rifles and Colt revolvers.

The stream bed is a jumble of rocks in a variety of types and textures, a geologic melange no doubt carried here, from the divide to the south, by ancient floods that, if they had any witnesses, must have been the Native Americans who lived here for millennia before the first prairie schooler bounced into view along the Oregon Trail, which is about 3 miles due south.

I would very much like to see the gorge — from the safety of the rimrock — on what must surely be the rare hour that it teems with muddy runoff. The water would make quite a ruckus, I suspect, as it tumbles over hip-high boulders wedged like chockstones and perhaps propels some smaller rocks a bit farther down the gorge, continuing a journey that started eons ago.

Near the northern end of the gorge proper, a spring rises — a feature as strange, in this land, as the chasm itself. In places the water lies on the surface — mostly frozen on the day of our hike but melted two days later — but it seems to go underground elsewhere. The water must eventually make it to Ruckles Creek, a slightly more substantial stream that empties into the Powder River near Keating.

There’s enough moisture, at any rate, to nourish a healthy crop of cockleburs (or, rather, an unhealthy crop, given the weed’s obnoxious, clinging ways). There’s also a single Russian olive, another pesky plant that typically thrives near much more reliable, and substantial, bodies of water.

The gorge is also a haven for wildlife, based on the plethora of tracks we saw in the snow — deer and jackrabbits and coyotes and squirrels and some sort of upland game bird, either chukars or Hungarian partridges.

After you emerge from the gorge, hike northwest a short distance, where you should soon see your parked car.

The hike is relatively easy, covering a couple miles at most, and with a negligible elevation gain.

But then I relish the place not for the physical challenge it presents, but that it exists at all, a gift of unexpected ruggedness and shelter hidden by the banal sameness that surrounds it.

Boulder Gorge is best visited during or after a period of dry or cold weather.

During a winter thaw, by contrast, or when the frost is going out of the ground in the spring, mud can make this a treacherous place to walk — or, worse, to drive.

The last week of 2022 epitomized this.

On Christmas Day the ground was frozen, with several inches of snow on top.

But two days later, when a warm front pushed the temperature up to around 50, most of the snow melted, turning the top few inches of the ground into something the approximate consistency of porridge.