The ground was still damp. Clear, fresh water was still trickling through the little arroyo, and the horses definitely drank from it. How nice for them to drink as they graze instead of heading a long way specifically to drink and move on!
And it rained again. It started before 5 a.m. Sunday and rained steadily all … day … long! I didn’t slog through the mud, but I’m guessing that all the arroyos and all the creeks are running with water – high and broad and rolling again!
**Update: It’s 6 p.m. Sunday, and I typed the above earlier in the afternoon. I don’t have to guess about the creeks and arroyos; they are RAGING and completely flooding. And it’s supposed to rain all night and into mid-morning Monday.
My first trip into the Spring Creek Basin interior in the last week-plus resulted in a wonderful, very grateful visit to Tenaz and his family group. 🙂
More rain Friday night returned our ground to damp (it was NOT all dry in the three or four (?) days between rains). And that’s a good thing, too.
Why did the mustang cross the road? To head down to a pond full of water, of course! Alegre is in the same band with Piedra, and it was that pond they were grazing their way toward at sunset the evening after the day of wild sky color.
I’ve pushed her back for a week; she’s been patiently awaiting her turn on the blog since Tuesday. 🙂
These pix are from more than a week ago now: before the rain. I haven’t been able to get to the interior of the basin since the day of these pix, which was the Tuesday before the rain started Wednesday. But given the wealth of weather phenomena happening, that’s been semi-, sorta-kinda OK (no, it actually hasn’t; I’m going through withdrawal, not seeing my ponies!).
So for this post a little, semi-break from the weather (not totally) … with a note: San Miguel County guys have started working to repair that erosion spot on Disappointment Road, and I hope to get some pix to highlight their good work. I don’t know the extent of damage in other parts of San Miguel County, but I’m guessing that it’s fairly significant, given the damage to roads/highways in other parts of the region, so I’m glad to have their work on our fairly minor erosion spot. And at the end of this post, a few links to recent overall articles about the flooding in southwestern Colorado and some amazing stories of rescues. They’re well worth reading (and checking out the embedded videos) to get an idea how historic the recent rains/flooding were (just in Colorado, to say nothing of New Mexico, Utah and Arizona).
It almost takes me back to my journalism days. 🙂 Onward!
Piedra in the light (again, this was the evening before the rain started last week; there were hardly any clouds in the sky that night).
One glorious refraction of light low on the southwestern horizon. Looking back maybe it was a sign of things to come, eh?
And I caught Denny doing a little work (!) on the erosion spot on Disappointment Road yesterday afternoon. He said they’d had about 10 dumptruck loads of “pit run,” which is dirt with rocks of various sizes in it to bind it together. Then they were about to go to “3-inch pit run” for the top of the road to build it up a bit. Lake Disappointment is receding – and has receded quite a bit. Sadly, I never did see any ducks on the water. 🙂
THIS big machine showed up yesterday about sunrise!
And by early afternoon, this is what the road looked like!
And back to full width! Looking eastish/up-valley. Several more dump trucks went up with loads after the above pix; that was for the smaller rock-and-dirt combo. And on the right/south side, Lake Disappointment has shrunk to Disappointment Pond. 🙂
Given all those guys have going on lately with the recent rainfall, HUGE thanks to them for taking care of our little part of the world!
First, happy, happy birthday to my mom, Nancy! This is a bit of a different post, but it’s been a different few days. 🙂 Happy birthday, Mama! I love you!
By now, you ought to recognize this spot. … What? You don’t? Visualize it – all those rocks – COVERED in deep, brown, rolling, cresting water. Now do you recognize it? 🙂 The water in Disappointment Creek is still running, but it’s MUCH lower now.
The road (Black Snag Road) is, um, gone. It’s also closed by Dolores County (as is Ryman Creek Road farther up-valley). That may not stop hunters from trying to get across.
It’s still fun to see that rushing water and realize that if I stood a few days ago where I was able to stand to take this pic, I’d have been chest or deeper (probably deeper) in absolutely raging water.
Next, I’m going to move on to a much tinier stream …
Now we’re in an arroyo in southern Spring Creek Basin, and that is water … STILL trickling!
A couple of different critters, at different times, walked along and likely drank from the trickle. I think those on the left were from a coyote, and they didn’t have any detail anymore. At right, a deer, I think (and I saw two groups of does and their fawns of the year on my way down the valley road).
A little step of bedrock created a tiny little waterfall in the trickle.
My favorite pic of the series. I mean … WATER! Fresh, live water! 🙂 Singing its own sweet little song in the back of beyond.
This pic is (and the rest of these pix are) from the fog day but later than yesterday’s post’s pix (!), after the fog had lifted. I was so crazed trying to get pix of the fogbow and other things that by the time I turned my attention to Temple Butte, which I *thought* was going to be my focus that morning, the fog had already cleared! It was fast! The good news for me is that some drifty clouds came back … and, also, more wild stuff.
Above: Looking across Disappointment Creek and lovely cottonwoods (some yellow, some still green) toward Spring Creek Basin. Visible: corral hill (if you know what you’re look at, you can see the storage tank), the south end of what I call bachelor ridge at far left, submarine ridge above/beyond it, Temple Butte at upper left, of course, and Brumley Point at left.
This view shows the fog, clearing to the south (the first pic’s view is basically to the left of this one). Disappointment Road is visible in two stretches, as well as part of the power line that runs up-(and/or down-)valley. On the left side of the road is Spring Creek Basin; on the right side is BLM (but not HMA).
Damp (soaked) soil + sunshine + passing fog/cloud humidity (you could SEE it in the air) = rising mist?!
That’s the south end of bachelor ridge; Round Top is beyond at right; McKenna Peak is at upper right.
Shout-out to Denny with San Miguel County for checking on and marking the erosion damage on Disappointment Road!
Ignore the power line across the top. There’s a better look at submarine ridge. Isn’t that mist cool? Way beyond – snow-covered – is Groundhog Mountain.
Who loves drama?! 🙂 McKenna Peak looking super cool at left. This is when the clouds were making a return to the scene.
Absolutely beautiful. And a bit different view of Spring Creek Basin that I rarely show (or maybe never have!).
How often do we have fog in Disappointment Valley?
I won’t say nevvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvver. But it’s very, super, pretty incredibly rare.
When I went out to see what I could see – FOG! – I found some critters looking back at me!
At the noise of a truck coming, they disappeared into the … fog! There were more deer than I’d realized, probably at least half a dozen.
Ah! They didn’t actually disappear (at least yet). The fog makes even familiar landscape look completely different!
I wanted to check on the erosion spot again. … A county road-and-bridge guy came out later; he was out both Saturday and Sunday! And they’ve had someone checking every day. It’s narrow, but it’s well-marked. This is from the northeast side looking southwest.
Now I’m on the north side of the road looking eastish.
Meanwhile, Lake Disappointment (har har) continues to hold water. All I needed here were some ducks. 🙂
I’m 5 foot 10; standing in the bottom, the level of the road is just above my head. I’m not sure you can tell, but there are now two “hoodoos” – free-standing “pillars” – one nearly directly below the left cone, and one has the chamisa/rabbitbrush growing sideways out of it.
Mother Nature has been giving the gifts supremely freely the last few days (destruction in some places; there’s been a lot of flooding of towns and homes in southwestern/southern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico and southern/southeastern Utah (just that I know about)).
Just as I was thinking of heading on, I noticed something a little different about the sky. … My eyes followed it up and over and down the other side. … HOLY MOLY!
OK, I might be a total weather nerd, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a fog bow (or fogbow?). It’s not like we get a lot of fog in Disappointment Valley (see above). 🙂
From this angle, the fogbow broke a little so I could see the little cloud beyond it.
This is what ol’ AI says about fogbows:
A fogbow (or white rainbow) is a meteorological phenomenon that appears as a ghostly, pale, or completely white arc in a bank of fog or mist.
How It Works
Droplet Size: Traditional rainbows form when light refracts through large raindrops (several millimeters wide). A fogbow forms when sunlight or moonlight interacts with tiny water droplets in fog or mist that are typically less than 0.05 mm (or 10 to 1,000 times smaller than raindrops).
Diffraction vs. Refraction: Because the droplets are so small, light undergoes strong diffraction rather than clean refraction. This spreads out and overlaps the individual wavelengths of light, smearing the colors together into a milky-white band.
Faint Colors: You might occasionally see a very faint red outer edge and a faint blue inner edge because those wavelengths are the least smeared.
How to Spot One
Positioning: You must stand with the sun or moon behind you and look forward into the fog or mist.
Conditions: It requires a delicate balance—fog that is dense enough to catch the light, but not so thick that it completely obscures visibility.
Other Names: At sea, mariners sometimes call them “sea-dogs,” and versions seen from high-altitude aircraft are called “cloud bows”. When created by moonlight, it is a “lunar fog bow”.
Is it amazing, or is it ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-mazing?! 🙂
The fog lifted … then returned – or clouds did. More rain, too. After Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, I’ve gotten almost 3.7 inches of rain. Absolutely incredible! Friends near Dove Creek (southwest of Disappointment Valley) said they got between 5 and 7 inches! WOWOW.
I’m trying to keep this post a little shorter, but I have more pix from the day. It’s still very, very soggy out. Denny from San Miguel County was out Sunday (and Saturday, too! and other guys earlier in the week) checking on the road erosion. They are very much keeping an eye on it, but if you’re in the area, take care!
Every month, about mid-month, I make a list for myself of moonrise times leading to the full moon (which, these days (months!), is toward the ends of the months). If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you might have realized how much I adore that ol’ moon. 🙂 What I find fascinating is that, while I’m hunting particular images of it rising from a particularly interesting stretch of far ridge-horizon-line, there are an infinite number of places from which to shoot it – and get it rising over that particular far ridge-horizon-line!
In the above image, I’m on Disappointment Road, and those are the old Perkins corrals (with modern improvements from the current permittee, who has the allotment OUTSIDE Spring Creek Basin to the south. The corrals date from the days when Mr. Perkins (and another fellow/family) had one of the two (yes, two originally) allotments to graze cattle in Spring Creek Basin. The basin boundary fence is to my left along the road, and the fence you see straight ahead, right of the chute, is the boundary fence as it goes to the road. The corrals now are sometimes used to bring cattle out to a central point to release in the spring … and then collect them in the fall to truck back out.
Now I’m farther up-valley to show the moon a bit closer to the point of the promontory that is Temple Butte. (After years of calling it the unnamed promontory, we got it officially named with USGS in 2018 for Pati Temple, a much-beloved mentor and grand, long-time advocate for the mustangs with her husband, David. Thank you, Ann Bond, for bearing the load of that process!)
With all the storms and clouds and rain and thus-invisible sky lately, all thoughts of the moon had completely left my brain. These pix, taken at just right the time where the moon is between clouds, were completely the result of luck and being there. 🙂
I’m not going into the interior of Spring Creek Basin just now, and may not be able to get in for another few-some days. It has been SUCH a different few days, and the mustangs haven’t really been front and center of Mother Nature’s shenanigans (for me), so I beg your patience and forgiveness, and I promise a return to mustang pix as soon as possible!
Well, yesterday was pretty quiet, weather-wise. Nice and sunny with fluffy, pretty clouds in a sharp blue sky. I made it down-valley to check on Disappointment Creek where it crosses under Disappointment Road on its way farther west, and I also watched happily as Spring Creek ran with muddy water in its broad arroyo a bit farther north.
This is a view of the still very swollen Disappointment Creek from what’s known locally as the Daddy Williams bridge (nope, I don’t know who Daddy Williams was). Looking upstream as the water flows toward me. Temple Butte is at just about center WAY back east.
And from the west side of the bridge as the water swirls and flows away toward the Dolores River.
Then farther north, past Road K20E to Spring Creek Basin – muddy and still puddled with rain water! – to check on Spring Creek. Oh, the anticipation! Would it still be running??
Spring Creek is much broader than Disappointment Creek at pretty close to the same elevation. You can see on the other side of the creek how high the water had risen along the creek bank and how much it had receded. By step-measurement, that was about 15 feet. Spring Creek Basin, the arroyos of which gather all this water into the lowest, main arroyo – Spring Creek – is visible in the distance to the east.
Spring Creek flowing out of Spring Creek Basin, through Spring Creek canyon, visible just right of center in the low background.
Looking nice and lovely and broad – and pretty shallow by this time – on the west side of this bridge, Spring Creek flows on west to join Disappointment Creek.
The rain should return today. Oh, and the total for the two full days between 8 a.m. Wednesday and 8 a.m. Friday: 2.74 amazing inches. Absolutely outstanding!
