Tuesday was a wild and crazy day … and that was just the weather. It was ultimately a successful day, though at least one part left me shaking my head at, well, how life unfolds. And it was a reminder that sometimes the smallest things, and the simplest things, are the most enjoyable of all.
From yesterday’s post, are you wondering what graupel looks like? (Thanks, Valerie, for your comment that led to this post!)
What? I hear you asking. That looks like snow or rain, you’re saying (zoom in to see the streaks). Look on the ground in the lower right corner. I was backed in under a (dead) tree to sit out one wave of it (it wasn’t very hard, and it didn’t last long) at that little side “road” to Disappointment Road, which is across the whole pic. See the little white “balls”?
AI says this: “Graupel, or soft hail, forms when supercooled water droplets freeze onto falling snowflakes, creating soft, small white pellets (2-5 mm) that resemble Dippin’ Dots or Styrofoam. These fragile, slushy particles are often called snow pellets and, unlike hard hail, crumble easily. They occur during wintry mix scenarios, causing sudden, slick conditions, and are identified in aviation reports as ‘GS’.”
I liked this part: Types of Graupel While commonly called graupel, it is sometimes referred to as:
Matsaaruti: A term used in the Nunavik region of Canada to describe wet, soft snow pellets.
Another pic from the same location as the first pic, looking pretty much straight north at what I call west-of-favorite hill (because it’s, you know, west of what I call favorite hill, which I so-named because once upon a very long time ago, “the pintos” really favored that hill and could very often be found atop it).
Also from the same spot, looking eastish again as the graupel wave recedes, driven by a strong out-of-the-south wind (I lost track, but at least three, maybe four went over us Tuesday morning). You can see Brumley Point very distinctly, submarine ridge and McKenna Peak to the left it it, and you can’t quite make out Temple Butte. If you slide back up to the first pic, Temple Butte is juuuuuust barely visible at far left, just under the power lines. And yes, the sunshine IS coming back out over the rest of us while the wave pushes north to the east.
With Artemis II and its remarkable human beings on board, their mission, their accomplishments, the images they sent back, from space looking home, in mind … and realizing the absolute tiny-ness of this one itty-bitty part of our great, wide, wild, wonderful, big blue marble … ain’t Earth gorgeous? Now you can see Temple Butte’s promontory emerging from behind Brumley Point (see the graupel/moisture evidence shining below its rimrocks?) and submarine ridge and McKenna Peak. And though you can’t see them in this pic, there were two groups of mustangs out there. Across the road and on the other side of that fence IS Spring Creek Basin.
Anybody know what this prickly little caterpillar is called? I’m not sure of the plant it’s on, either.
I tried a lot, but I could NOT get the eye end (far left – is that an eye?) in focus. Of course, I didn’t know that in the field, not having my eyeball glasses on and looking through the glare of my phone screen, but I did try a number of shots with high hopes. One of our BLM range guys recently posted a pic of the same caterpillar, but he’s a plant guy (and an extraordinarily awesome one), not a bug guy, so I’m sure he can tell me the plant, if not the bug (!). If I reach him for an ID before this posts (or even after), I’ll update.
** Update from Ryan, BLM rangeland management specialist and all-around plant guy!:
“Cool that you’re seeing the same caterpillar! [He saw the same kind recently in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, southwest of Spring Creek Basin.] I’m very curious as to what species of butterfly/moth they will turn into, I’m not good at insect ID but will ask Nate West [BLM wildlife biologist]. The plant that those are on is a mustard species called Alyssum simplex, commonly just called madwort. It’s a pretty prevalent non-native annual that is really common around here, unfortunately. It’s a beautiful picture of the hair-structure on the caterpillar!” Thanks, Ryan!
The reason you can’t see Utah’s La Sal Mountains in this pic – way northwest of Spring Creek Basin, from the very far southeastern part of Spring Creek Basin – is because the rain/graupel/snow wasn’t through sending waves over them. 🙂 You CAN see, from right to left, Round Top, Flat Top (looks sloping), Filly Peak and the south-facing rimrocks. Disappointment Road is over to the left somewhere (not far)
From here, we’re looking over not much of the southern part of Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area (the pic above this one has a perspective to the right of this one) but a lot of the south/southwestern part of Disappointment Valley (most but not all of the pinon-juniper woodlands as far as the eye can see). The near pinon-juniper is within Spring Creek Basin.
From the same spot now looking back to the south/southeast at another little rain/snow/graupel-fall, toward the Glade and Benchmark Lookout (hi, Rick and Linda! (I think they’re not at the fire lookout tower quite yet)). The near hills and pinon-juniper are all within Spring Creek Basin. The far, thickly treed ridges are partly (middle-ish ground) part of upper Disappointment Valley and partly (farther) part of San Juan National Forest lands beyond Disappointment Valley and its watershed.
And what the heck was I doing at the high end of a long drop? See the horse trail? 🙂 I was following where the sure-footed have gone before me (and not for the first time).
The above are in order of how I took them … hours apart from first to last.
And because you came here for the mustangs …
Mysterium, modeling her scruffy-chic look (fashion designers, take note – ha!) below Temple Butte. 🙂 Yes, those are a couple of cuts on the inside of her left hind leg, but she’ll heal quickly, as mustangs do!
Thanks, as always, for coming along for glimpses of this special world. 🙂
I’m rarely out in Spring Creek Basin during midday, but sometimes, needs (and other scheduled events) must.
The heat waves were tremendous (argh – this warm this early is not cool (!)), but isn’t scruffy Corazon looking handsome as he transitions from his winter coat to his summer sleek!?
Wait, that’s not a mustang, I hear you thinking. 🙂 Correct! That’s a young mule deer, and s/he starts the journey of this particular blog post (which doesn’t include a mustang in sight). S/he was, in fact, inside Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, and I was on the road.
But let’s back up a moment.
This is where my short trip up-Disappointment-Valley actually started: Seeing snow completely covering nearby Lone Cone from just within the southern part of Spring Creek Basin (not quite as far south/southeast as the mule deer). Except for the very southern area, Lone Cone isn’t visible from most of the basin. (And that promontory in the distance isn’t Temple Butte, which is closer and to my left out of frame.)
Much, most – all?? – of the region got blissful, sweet, rejuvenating rain (at least) on Wednesday. Obviously, higher elevations got some welcome snow. I write a lot about how dry it is in Disappointment Valley and, specifically, Spring Creek Basin. I’ve been writing a lot this “winter” about how dry it has been this past non-winter. It gives me no pleasure and a lot of terror to note that folks are now calling this the “worst [winter] on record,” according to The Colorado Sun. How bad is it?
So consider this post part education, part joy at seeing Lone Cone covered in snow (at least for a little while). The words or phrases in blue (and possibly underlined) indicate links to outside sources. It’s going to be a little bit of a long post, too (sorry to bury the lede!), so grab your brew of choice and come along with me – and also, I should tell you now that this spans back-to-back days, an evening (Thursday) and the following morning (Friday). You’ll see why as we follow the snow. 🙂
I love Temple Butte. I loved Pati Temple, for whom the butte is named. Previously and for several years, I called it the unnamed promontory, and because it was unnamed, officially, we were able to apply to the U.S. Geological Survey, five years after her passing, to start the process to honor Pati and her dedicated devotion to Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs. Huge thanks to Kat Wilder for coming up with “Temple Butte” as a name, and especially ginormous thanks to Ann Bond (retired from the U.S. Forest Service) for diving deep into the computer work to get that done – undying gratitude! Now it is *officially* Temple Butte, though it’s hard to find maps yet with it marked as such. Our new kiosk at the main western entrance to Spring Creek Basin has a map that shows it (thanks, BLM!!), but when I did a Google search, although I came up with other Temple Butte(s) (!), I found only this reference to ours. It’s a super cool sort of AI rendition of looking at the region as though you’re on top of the butte. Move the view around, and you can see numerous named points of view, including McKenna Peak and Brumley Point. I’ve never been atop either Temple Butte or McKenna Peak, or Brumley Point, though I’ve been way up its sides, but I imagine you can’t help but have noticed that Temple Butte and McKenna Peak (at least) favor heavily in a lot of my images of Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs from all over the basin. 😉
I continued driving up-valley. …
I was so surprised to see this flock of turkeys that I almost didn’t realize at first what I was seeing!
Question: Why are turkeys SO hard to photograph?? Even when I’ve seen them close, my pix of them are almost always blurry. You’d think that with a bird THAT huge, they’d be a cinch. … Yeah, but those tiny heads are, well, tiny! I do love that you can see the color in this tom’s head and some of the greenish iridescence of his gorgeous feathers. There might have been eight to 12 birds in this flock?
Not much farther, I stopped in the middle of the road and shot over the hood to try to catch these two young bull elk and a cow as they raced across the road and into the trees near some cattle pens belonging to up-valley neighbors. Note the “orange” pines in the background. Not even in Southwest Colorado are we escaping the deaths of ponderosas (and other conifers) across Colorado and the West because of drought and insects.
Thankfully, there also are many live ponderosas. At this point, way up-valley, I was starting to get amazing views of Groundhog Mountain. “Groundhog” in this neck of the woods generally refers more to Groundhog Reservoir, where there’s a store and rental cabins and a tiny community of summer cabins. From this view of Groundhog Mountain, those are over yonder on the other side. In the view above – and also of Lone Cone – I was fascinated to see that the trees on the lower shoulders of both mountains were still cloaked in snow. And if you look closely at the above image, you can see that crazy ol’ wind blowing snow from the peak.
Looks pretty wintry, eh? But I think you can tell, even from this distance, that the snow layer is thin. The lower stands of trees are aspen, which are only just beginning to bud and leaf out (depending on elevation; I did see a couple of small pockets of aspen wearing their brand-new bright-green spring leaves).
Traffic jam! Disappointment-Valley-style. 🙂 Look at that GREEN. GRASS!
The elk didn’t cross the road to get to the green grass (there was plenty where they’d crossed from) but because the other side of the road features wide-open meadows and more of their friends and family. Almost all I saw in this crowd were cows and youngsters with some young bulls still hanging onto associations with mamas and aunties. There weren’t a huge number of them … fewer than 75, I’d guess.
What a contrast, right? The “ugly” head – but those colors! love! – with the absolutely gorgeous feathers. (The darkness at right is the back of my back truck window.) They’re also hard to photograph because they’re faster than you think they should be. This poor guy and another one were “stuck” on the road side of the fence …
… but they very quickly flapped and flew those big bodies over the fence to rejoin their flock. (I can’t get over how green it is up-valley. This is just several miles above the south end of Spring Creek Basin.)
The sun was quickly nearing the western horizon when I took this and the next couple of pix. Great timing, especially with some stormy clouds still swirling above and beyond Groundhog Mountain.
That light! That snow. 🙂 (You can see how not very far down it isn’t there at all.)
It’s still winter somewhere. 🙂 For a little bit longer. Lone Cone snow provides the water that eventually flows down Disappointment Creek, so the more snow, the better. That water doesn’t benefit the mustangs in Spring Creek Basin, but it benefits numerous other species of wildlife from way up high all the way to the canyons of the Dolores River at the far lower end of Disappointment Valley.
Admit it, you didn’t think it could get better. 🙂 When I first was at the upper end of the valley, the clouds were giving Groundhog Mountain the dramatic, bold light and color. This was pretty immediately post-sunset, and the clouds had drifted over to light up the sky above Lone Cone (Groundhog Mountain is farther to the right from this perspective). Um, WOW.
Here we go: A cellphone pic from the “lookout curve” on the switchbacks that lead up and out of Disappointment Valley on the Dolores-Norwood Road (toward Dolores) shows Lone Cone at left and Groundhog Mountain at right at just about last light. I couldn’t have timed that better (the curve was my ultimate destination) if I’d tried (and I did!).
Then it was a down-valley drive as the light faded. Fortunately, though I watched hard, no kamikaze elk or turkeys (or even deer) shared the road with me. I missed full-moonrise this month because of the weather (if you think I’m complaining, please allow me to reiterate my eternal gratitude for the mostly daylong rainfall!!!), and although there were some colorful clouds, they were mostly drifting along the horizons by dark, so I thought maybe I’d get to see the night-after-full-moonrise from farther down-valley. …
This is from my phone (!): Moonrise over Disappointment Valley. WoWoWoWoW!!!
It took a bit for the moon to clear the horizon clouds, but holy wow. You can clearly see Temple Butte and Brumley Point under the glow of the moon. While I’m sure the view of space FROM space (lookin’ at ya’ll, Artemis II astronauts!) is, ahem, otherworldly, I kinda think the above is pretty damn cool (and from my *phone*!). This might be my favorite image from the entire day/night.
Because I couldn’t resist trying to capture it with my camera, too. 🙂 Those are clouds at lower left as the moon was rising out of the cloud bank.
What a day, right?! And that was literally just about the last three hours of it.
And then the next morning came. … My phone’s weather app’s radar showed spots of snow over Disappointment Valley. Oh, you liar, thought I (because it so usually does lie). … And then I went out into the world.
Well, knock me over with a feather! It DID snow … up-valley, not mid- or lower valley (nor did it rain). In the foreground are very newly leafed-out cottonwoods along Disappointment Creek, and in the midground are part of the rimrocks that form the southwestern boundary of Spring Creek Basin. In the background, starting at far right: Flat Top, Round Top and submarine ridge; smack dab in the middle, McKenna Peak; and towering o’er all, Temple Butte.
And from up-valley:
What I call submarine ridge at far left … and McKenna Peak just right of dead center. The very top/back ridge, if you follow it right, ends in Temple Butte.
Voila!
That snow will soak in; it’s not enough to produce runoff. And it was windy again, which further contributes to drying.
The tiniest bit of a tiny dusting still lingered in shady places under trees (this was just inside the Spring Creek Basin boundary from up-valley along Disappointment Road). Evidence that it HAD, in fact, snowed in the area.
And one last view, of Groundhog Mountain, through a curtain of snow!
It’s a crazy world. 🙂
It’s a crazy BEAUTIFUL world! 🙂
Thanks for coming along. Hope you enjoyed our (temporary) retreat to winter. Snow or rain, we need any and/or all that Mother Nature wishes to bestow.
Heading TO Spring Creek Basin, I found the prince’s plume plants in full, crazy bloom. Why is this crazy, I hear you asking? Because they don’t usually bloom until May. IN Spring Creek Basin, the prince’s plumes I saw were a little behind these along Road K20E toward the basin, which makes sense as the basin is a bit higher elevation than along this road.
Heading OUT of Spring Creek Basin, the grey sky exploded with color at and post-sunset! Wowza. The weather wizards are giving us a whopping NINETY PERCENT chance of rain Wednesday. Do you know what Wednesday is? Wednesday is April 1, otherwise known as April Fools’ Day. Call me a fool a million times over, and please, please, PLEASE, let it RAINRAINRAIN!!!
Merlin (the app) tells me this is, in fact, a mountain bluebird. I know it looks green. Pretty sure it’s not the camera/lens/white balance/color cast because it looked green in person!
That big white disc behind it is the MOON!
I got kinda skunked again trying to photograph it rising because of thin clouds that were just enough to block/blend the moon as it rose behind the eastern(ish) ridges. When I got back to my buggy from a fairly long walk into Spring Creek Basin looking for the *right* place to stand and shoot (spoiler: I didn’t actually find it), this beautiful fellow flew in to check me out from the utility wire right above me and the road. How sweet! How did it know I needed a pick-me-up? 🙂 These bright blue flashes of gorgeousity are everywhere right now. … I’m not sure whether they’re early … or right on time. The temp hit 68 insane degrees yesterday.
He gave me enough time to unpack my camera from my bag, fiddle faddle around and change some settings from moon-shooting … and of course, he posed like the gorgeous creature he is (see top pic) … before he flew off. I got this pic (above), and then everything else was a green blur (pretty sure that’s a superhero character: “The Green Blur”).
Yesterday was another day when the temperature hit at least 65F. I wish those clouds had given us moisture, like the several-days-ago-forecast hinted was possible, but all the atmosphere delivered was more wind.
Fortunately, Alegre and her band are finding water (look at that mud!). I think it’s a pond that’s no longer (easily) accessible because of washouts across the road.
How good are *my* BLM folks? THIS GREAT *arms spread wide*!
Allow me to highlight:
Days before the end of the shutdown, toward the end of third rifle season, when I was feeling very tired and hard done by at the sheer volume of humanity in a usually very quiet, very peaceful place, one of our law-enforcement rangers, Matt Abraham, came into Disappointment Valley to check on Spring Creek Basin. Um, wow! But that’s who these guys are and have been since I started volunteering 18 years ago (I’ve known at least five).
The day (?) the shutdown ended, herd manager Anton Rambur was out in Disappointment Valley to check on things. The muddy road prevented him from accessing Spring Creek Basin, but that this was one of his priorities at his return to work … ???!!! He wanted to know what was happening and what I needed.
Later that afternoon, I got a call from the other range specialist, Ryan Schroeder, asking – again – what HE could do for ME and the MUSTANGS/BASIN.
Upon returning to the computer, I had an email from range tech Laura Heaton asking what SHE could do for us!
Like, um, I don’t even have words to express my crazy-level appreciation and gratitude for these excellent human beings!
One of my mentions to all three of them was that it would be great to have (more) signs to deter the illegal route-making in the basin – as reader Sue calls them, “rogue roads.” I had one very particular place in mind (and have for the two years people have been driving around a particular washout … only to get stymied within half a mile by a washout they CAN’T cross …). …
The following day, I had a message from BLM park ranger Jon Whitehead asking for details about what signs we need! And Wednesday, he and Ryan brought promised signs and stickers to Spring Creek Basin to erect in areas to hopefully stop already-done resource damage and continue to prevent it in places where the signs, with their sun-faded stickers, have worked for nearly or more than 18 years.
Please follow along in pix:
We have to start at the start: That’s Jon driving and Ryan riding shotgun (unfortunately, both Anton and Laura had duties elsewhere that day) at Road 19Q (behind them – and look! it’s being graded! thanks, Denny from San Miguel County!) and Road K20E to Spring Creek Basin. (Also note the water at right; that’s from Sunday’s rain.) Safety first!
The *serious* BLM faces as they’re about to prep an existing carsonite sign for a new sticker. …
They couldn’t maintain those stoic faces for more than a couple of seconds. 🙂 We shouldn’t have so much fun “working” … should we?? 😉 Note the snow over the Glade in the background! We got a drizzle later, but we agreed that was likely snow at higher elevation.
Wonder what “carsonite” is? Apparently, it’s a brand, which means that I should be capitalizing it, but I think I’m going to leave it because we refer to it somewhat generically. It’s like fiberglass, and as Jon will tell you, don’t (try not to) touch it with your bare hands/fingers.
And on goes the new sticker over the old, faded one!
This is a place on a curve in the road, and the edge of this level of ground is less than 50 yards away. … But it had been just too tempting for people to DRIVE over there to look over the edge as opposed to leaving their vehicles or buggies at the road, getting off their butts and WALKING over to look over the edge. So that’s why we had placed the sign there years ago – and why I’d “reinforced” the message with the old branches you see on the ground. There are any number of places in the basin where I have seen tire tracks that lead from the road to the edge of a ridge or place where the ground falls off, including this last driving (aka “hunting”) season. It makes me craaaaaaaaaaaaaazy.
No less important in terms of the sign stickers and their meanings: the American flag. These are America’s public lands! Respect them, no matter how you use them!
On to our next location, a reminder to not handle these signs with bare hands: splinters! This is the location of an old “Y,” driven in by people too lazy to use the actual road (up the hill) to get to the main road, which comes out not even 75 yards away. Interestingly, this is the site of one of my very first volunteer projects for BLM in Spring Creek Basin; shout out to Kathe Hayes, retired long-time volunteer coordinator for San Juan Mountains Association, who spent countless hours shepherding excellent projects in the basin (including the much-loved alternative spring break program with University of Missouri students). You might have heard that Colorado gets 300 days of sunshine every year. In Disappointment Valley, we take pride in the fact that we likely get about *600* days a year of sunshine (har har). Remember the faded information board that led to the installation (with our most-excellent BLM folks!) of the new kiosk earlier this year? Yeah. You laugh, but we know how much sunshine we get! These signs were due for updated and easier-to-read stickers.
This image really illustrates why it’s so important to protect the resources of Spring Creek Basin, specifically, and many of the West’s drought-fragile landscapes in general: We closed this route 17-18 years ago? It STILL bears the traces of the drivers who ignored that fragility and made a new route because they were too lazy to use the established road – a “designated route,” as BLM calls them.
Every illegal “Y” has its other end, so here are the guys adhering a new sticker to the carsonite sign at the top of the hill. The actual road is right behind Jon.
On to our next location! This was the first installation of the day of a new sign, and we put it at the dugout intersection, which marks the start (or end, or both!) of “the loop,” which is no longer completable (is that a word?!) by vehicle or even most UTVs/ATVs because of washouts (which was the main impetus behind the day and the signs, as you’ll see later). Note the rusty old cable; a bonus to attaching the new stickers to the signs at either end of the old “Y” was that I spotted both old wire clumps and this length of old cable, starting to erode out of the soil, where it had been for … decades? At least nearly 18 years.
This sign, at an intersection, reminds travelers to stay on designated routes. Jon lamented this need, as there are no fewer than THREE big signs from just south of the highway to just before to just inside Spring Creek Basin’s western boundary (and main entrance) that warn that exact message (along with similar signs all along Disappointment Road). … I think of them as just another pretty-please reminder.
Wonder how the heck one of those narrow, flimsy signs is installed, aka pounded into the ground?
It requires a specialized “pounder.” First, you need the “tile spade” pictured at right, to create a “slit” in the ground and test for out-of-sight rocks (and with our recent rain, the damp ground was very accommodating!) to ensure you *don’t* hit rock. As Jon said, if you pound that flimsy, floppy carsonite sign and it hits rock, the whole thing is wrecked. Then the pounder does the rest. I’ve wielded my fair (or more than fair?!) share of T-post pounders, where you have to hold the post steady or have an unflinching friend do it so it doesn’t twist. Note the men’s toe-to-toe technique on either side of the base of the carsonite; that was to prevent it buckling as it entered the ground.
Now we’re getting to the new water catchments and where I really, really wanted the signs. This one, pictured, was the second one built by Mike Jensen, Garth Nelson, Daniel Chavez and me (the first one included Jim Cisco), in 2022. People really can’t help themselves (!) from driving where they shouldn’t, including over not only fragile ground that doesn’t recover quickly (see above) but also the very limited vegetation on which the mustangs AND deer AND elk AND pronghorn graze and browse. You can see by the wood scattered around that I’ve tried to block it using natural means; people just drive across the ground from somewhere else (at least three other places that I’ve tried to block at this location). And not only directly to the water trough and tanks but to the pond (which, thankfully, is holding water!). … Like, WHY??? I get the curiosity; but have some respect and WALK.
And now we’ve reached the last stop, and, to/for me, the most important.
The 2021 water catchment is behind Jon, not 50 yards away. See the wood on the ground behind him? Over the last two years, I’ve dragged a number of old branches and trunks down from the trees up the hill to line the edge of the road to prevent lookie-loos from lazily driving down to and around the water trough, downhill from the roofed catchment tanks. It has mostly worked, though I’ve had to add more as people, too lazy to even move the blocks, find a “hole” and think that’s OK to drive past/through/around. (And we still found old tracks that indicate people are still doing it. Sigh.)
But in 2024, when we had big, flooding rains in early summer, the road, directly ahead of the UTV in the pic, washed out, leaving a gaping chasm where the road had been (you can see the line of it in the pic). That, effectively, ended the road right there. … Until hunting season, which was wet last year, and people repeatedly drove around the washout to continue, driving-in a rogue and illegal route and damaging resources – again, the vegetation upon which the wildlife depend. I literally cried. And put up more blockade branches and trunks on that side … which people continued to ignore and drove either over or past.
When we arrived at the location, which I hadn’t visited at all this past hunting season as my heart just couldn’t take it, sure enough, people had left my last blockade intact … and just created yet another new route to get around the washout – which is even worse now and even washed away their “shorter shortcut” (which I’d also attempted repeatedly to block).
But I didn’t cry at the destruction this time because I had guys with me who were about to justify my upsettedness at the lazy-ness of man (to be fair, most of them have been men), and we were about to proclaim in more certain terms than dead-pinon/juniper trunks/branches and big rocks that YOU SHALL NOT PASS! (I do love a fellow LOTR fan! Thanks, Ryan!)
The sticker going on the carsonite for the sign you saw in yesterday’s post.
Along with:
I really kinda love this pic. Those are hands that belong to someone who cares deeply about our public lands, their value and their sacredness. And though they’re the hands of only one, *I* know, and I tell you with all sincerity, that hands just like that belong to every person at Tres Rios Field Office (at least).
Sign inserted into pounder; check. Note the tire marks Jon and Ryan are standing on. The road is immediately behind Jon.
Pounding commencing; check. At right, you can see my blockade – untouched because the drivers just shifted to driving where Jon and Ryan are installing the sign – and above that, the washout. It starts at the left (literally) and runs right/south/downhill to join a bigger arroyo/drainage downhill of the catchment.
Now looking back to the road (on which the UTV is parked), my blockade along the road to try to protect the water catchment. The silver trough is just visible to the left of the leftmost tank. Yes, it’s THAT close to the road. NO need to drive down there when it’s so easily walkable to get a better/closer look! The tire tracks on the rogue route are really distinct in this image.
For a better look at the rogue route and the resource damage caused (after only two years):
The track at right is where people first started driving off the road to get around the washout. Directly ahead is where they shifted so as to ignore the blockade that plainly (!?) was meant to deter people from driving illegally over our precious and drought-limited grasses and other vegetation (cacti and four-wing saltbush are among the most destroyed).
From where they crossed the “head” of the washout, over bedrock, to return to the actual road, which is semi-visible along where this illegal route makes its last curve.
Why ELSE is this rogue route so infuriating (as if destruction of resources and the vegetation the mustangs and other wildlife depend on weren’t enough)? Within a short distance (less than a quarter-mile?) is another, bigger drainage and semi-washout (that has been hunter-filled with rocks to make it crossable). But just another quarter-or-less-mile past THAT is a washout that isn’t crossable except by walking, riding a bike or a horse or a motorbike or perhaps jigging a relatively small ATV around – and that was the last time I saw it. With the more recent rains, it’s possible that even jigging isn’t possible anymore. Either way, it’s a risky or not-possible-to-cross washout, so why destroy resources just to continue driving another half-mile??? ARGH! It has made me craaaaaaaaaaaaazy!
While out in wildcat valley a few days ago, during third rifle season, I sat with a band and literally watched a truck drive up to the washout, see the washout, back up and drive around the washout to continue on … to the washout they couldn’t pass. … Then return. Following the tracks made by others. I know these people are *just* trying to access public lands, and I am not inherently anti-hunting (though I am very against the *driving* culture that seems to be “the way to do it” out here). I believe *respect* is key, and animals are trying to survive on this fragile landscape. Please, please respect the land AND the wildlife!
I am keen to say that I’ve noticed that other signs such as those we put up Wednesday have been very much honored in the basin regarding non-designated and please-don’t-drive-on routes. I hope these signs also are honored, and I hope it indicates to visitors that we have land managers here who give a damn about the land and the herd and the way our natural resources are treated.
No joke: THIS happened over Jon and Ryan as we were leaving. 🙂 AND I found an old horseshoe while we were installing another sign (I didn’t think to take a pic, but it was a much better find than the rusty old wire and rusty old cable). If those aren’t *signs* that Mother Nature herself is happy with our work, I sure don’t know what are.
Absolute heartfelt gratitude to all who made this happen, including and hugely Jon and Ryan! This was a very long post about seemingly very little things, but those little signs have the potential to signal big impacts for the preservation of Spring Creek Basin and its vegetation resources for generations to come of mustangs (as well as deer, elk and pronghorns, and no, I do NOT apologize for hammering this point!), not to mention all those living their best lives right now. 🙂
We rarely get morning rainbows; we rarely get morning rain (and even more rarely with sunshine).
Along with a lot of rain the last few days (about 2.56″), we’ve had a lot of sunshine.
This IS Colorado, after all!
Yeah, so THIS happened yesterday morning!
The cottonwoods along Disappointment Creek are starting to glow gold. And yes, it was sprinkling through the sunshine, which brought the magic. (The above pix are looking west; sun rising behind me above the rain clouds.)
Wonder what it looked like back to the east? Here ya go! A lot different, eh? The sun was rising to upper right. This is Disappointment Road/Road 19Q looking toward Spring Creek Basin (not the road TO the basin).
Now I’m at 19Q looking west up Road K20W (not to be confused with K20E(ast) to Spring Creek Basin).
The sign struck me as funny under the rainbow. I mean, really, do you need a destination when the treasure is right in front of you??
Here we are at Road K20E looking eastish/southeastish toward Spring Creek Basin as the storm was passing to the north. (Sorry about the crazy glare-arrow; my phone’s camera lens is cracked.) Don’t make the mistake of driving this road for at least a few days! The cottonwoods at right line Disappointment Creek, which, yep, was running!
The rainbow (at least the main one) lasted somewhat longer than 30 minutes?!
It.
Was.
EXCEPTIONAL!
And when it finally faded, little curtains of rain were still moving south to north across the eastern(ish) part of the valley.
A person can never have too much magic in their lives. 🙂
Don’t hate me for making up spectacular words to match the gorgeousity of the magic scenery, painted by Mother Nature. … Anyone would (and should) do it. 🙂
(And yes, I did get semi-soaked!)
“It won’t rain.”
The rain came from behind-ish me (southish), and though it lasted (at a guess) less than five minutes, it soaked my right pant leg and right shoulder/arm and left water dripping down my leg inside my pants (!). These two pix (above) are looking north as the rain has mostly passed over me and is continuing north.
From the same spot as the first two pix, looking now eastish, I watched the moon rise over Temple Butte (promontory) and McKenna Peak (pyramid).
The moon was still barely visible when the light hit the passing rain and formed the prism, but while trying to decide between my phone and big camera, I think I missed it before it rose into the clouds (argh!).
With more dark clouds rising from the south and mustangs mostly far and scattered across the northern part of the basin, I decided to return another day. … (Note: It’s not a good idea to go into the basin if it’s going to rain. The road can get spectacularly bad when really, really, super wet.)
Wellllllll (a friend and a new friend will understand that heavily accented word 🙂 ) … when your gut tells you to turn around and make for the place where the rainbow will align with the pot of gold you know to be there (if you know, you know), be like Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and pay attention to your gut!
I stood in the sunshine along Disappointment Road while the second wave of rain passed from south to north across Spring Creek Basin (the rimrocks are Spring Creek Basin’s western boundary; the basin stretches away to the east in the northeasternish part of Disappointment Valley).
And the spectacularity JUST. GOT. BETTER.
End to end under the powerlines.
Temple Butte is visible again as the storm moves north.
This is NOT part of the original/above rainbows; it was a newly formed prism as the rain continued to pass and clear and the sun found space beneath the clouds above the western horizon. This stretch of Disappointment Road goes straight east.
After dark, we got yet another little wave of the good rain stuff. *Sigh of contentment*.
Maybe more overnight and in the morning. (Fingers and toes all crossed!)
I mean … RIGHT?! 🙂 Magic, folks. Pure magic. No artificial ingredients added. 🙂
It’s not my intention to ignore all the ills of the world on this blog, just to make it a place of peace and beauty.
Two nights ago, clouds stymied my moonrise photography attempts, but Mother Nature put on a show, nonetheless. You can’t really call that a rainbow – a light prism? – over Brumley Point, but it was a much better sight than the image I took the day before that looked like Brumley, which looks enough like an old volcano, was actually erupting.
This was the second time it happened (and I was in a bit different location). Neither occurrence lasted more than a minute or two?
Do dragonflies bring you joy? It’s way out of focus here near the in-focus pinon tree – in my defense, I was pretty far away, and it was zipping faster than I could follow, let alone focus – but that little beam of zooming light (seeing it backlit against a far mesa is what caught my attention in the first place) brought ME joy! I realized that it was snatching flying insects out of the air, which I cheered wholeheartedly. The gnats are largely gone, but we have (still) big flies and (now) these weird little things that are bigger than gnats and almost as exasperating.
The moon did rise above the clouds eventually, of course. No matter the conditions here on Earth, it’s always, comfortingly, there – somewhere out there.
Most importantly, to paraphrase Mad-Eye Moody (apologies to non-Harry Potter fans): Stay vigilant!
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 