Fourth rifle season ended a little past sunset last night – thank goodness. Every year, the human pressure increases. Where once it was horrible only during third season, now all the seasons have their pressures … from the first of September through late November. It’s exhausting for the animals (of which I’m only one two-legged critter).
Flash perks up from his nap long enough to give me a handsome look. He has two of Storm’s mares, so at least they’re together.
Third rifle season finally is over in Colorado.
I think it’s not an understatement or anthropomorphism to say that I and the animals (of all species) are in a state of relief. Interestingly, I think the hordes were fewer this year, and while I think most were well-behaved (and I met and talked to a few very nice individual hunters – including a very friendly young man from Oregon), there was at least one instance (relayed to me by a hunter who witnessed it from quite a distance and up a ridge away) of shooting from the road (totally illegal), possibly after the 30-minutes-after-sunset rule, onto private property (which may or may not have been properly noted as such on their OnX map apps).
I witnessed at least two hunters leaving their camp well past 30 minutes after sunset to go … somewhere? And when starting to head out of the basin one night after sunset, from deep-east in the basin, was passed by two hunters going even DEEPER into the basin. Flouting the rules?! Draw your own conclusion.
The horses have been nervous to the rifle shots and accompanying echoes, which caused everything from startling in place to taking off running en masse.
Relief? Huge.
There’s still fourth season, which starts Wednesday and runs through Sunday (blessedly short), but we rarely get hunters during that season – and not the camping-here, driving-up-and-down-the-road-from-5:14 a.m.-to-well-after-dark (I lose track) hunters that third season is (in)famous for hosting.
Early Friday morning, I saw subtle color in the scudding clouds in the southeastern sky and decided to see what was happening (let alone keep an eye out for any nefariousness). … That subtle color had faded to grey by the time I got out on the road. … But then … starting with just a couple of bands of flame above the horizon … THE LIGHT EXPLODED.
And behind me to the west:
There was quite a lot of distortion as the moon sank – quite unlike the sharp views when it rises? – but take my word for the marvelousity (kinda like gorgeousity – all phenomenal!).
My big camera and long lens simply can’t take it all in, so I switched to my phone. In the foreground is Disappointment Road heading southeast. Visible in the distance are Temple Butte and Brumley Point.
Presented in the order in which they were taken. I know they all look similar … but the sky went from spectacular to SPECTACULAR, and show me a photographer who can *stop* taking pix of a such a scene (you can’t, and we certainly can’t).
Bear with me (because you know there’s more).
Continuing in order … looking a bit more to the east (left). I laid down in the middle of the road to take this one, something I’d never have done at the height of the hunting season.
Meanwhile, what was happening behind me, where the moon had already set?
More gorgeousity! Looking northwest to Utah’s La Sal Mountains.
Back to the southeast … starting to see a different color hue as the Earth continued its rotation and the sun edged closer to its morning debut.
Clouds and light and land to the southwest, where the moon set before the colors took off (darnit!).
One more of our beloved horizon mountains.
Apologies to sailors for swapping words to the usual rhyme. 🙂 (Not really.) It WAS very windy, which I imagine wouldn’t be so fun if you had to row against it or sail with it propelling you away from your destination. But wow. I hope many, many photography-minded and beauty-loving people stopped what they were doing and admired the sunrise yesterday.
Speaking of big babies … Odin is still dependent on mama Shane (or so he probably likes to think … and she seems content to let him continue to think). 🙂
(Reminder: All that snow is gone now, currently.)
Seneca … so gorgeous in evening hues of light and bronze.
******
We got SNOW yesterday! LOTS and lots of snow. On top of lots of rainy mud. To say it’s *soggy* in Disappointment Valley right now is the hugest of huge understatements. 🙂 Once again, I went into the basin to try to find ponies, but the snow was constant, and the visibility was extremely limited, so I returned without any snowy pony pix (or even pronghorns this time).
This moisture is extremely beneficial for our vegetation, the ponds and the water-storing catchments. After a long run of very warm and very dry weather, it’s nice to be in the mud again.
I just adore the richness of a beautiful bay mustang against the blues and golds of a rich desert background. Tenaz.
La Sals beyond Disappointment Valley/Creek cottonwoods.
We had rain in the valley – to the tune of almost 0.80 inch total (way, way more than we got in all of September). To say I’m “grateful” is a vast, vast understatement. 🙂
Now THAT looks like autumn. 🙂
By the time I was out with Mariah and her band on Saturday, the snow was noticeably melting, and clouds were lowering over the peaks. Sunday had more rain and super sogginess, and if I could have seen the mountains for the heavy clouds, I bet they’d have shown pristine white caps again.
Yes, major-super gratitude. 🙂
Prepare ye for brilliance.
When I went into the basin Saturday evening, this was the view to the northwest beyond Spring Creek Basin, its namesake canyon and lower Disappointment Valley. You can just see eastern Utah’s northern La Sal Mountains at the right edge of the vast curtain of storm-rain.
This pic, with its sage-covered foreground, semi-jagged horizon and gorgeous-glorious sky with angel rays above an isolated downpour of distant rain, illustrates *The West* to me.
Fast forward a couple of hours, and this was developing above our southeastern horizon: end of Valentine Mesa, Temple Butte, McKenna Peak, the crowns of submarine ridge and Brumley Point over Knife Edge, The Glade in the far distance (hi, Rick!) beyond Round Top and Flat Top.
At the same time as above, this was the view to the west. I thought we were going to get last light through that window to the right of the sun, but the clouds had other ideas.
While my very long lens is perfect for capturing pix of the mustangs, not even my wide-angle lens (if I’d had it along) is wide enough for this amazing view of Storm’s band under the, uh, storm clouds (he WAS born under a storm!).
The light on those clouds – and the very far ridges (bottom center between submarine ridge and Brumley Point) – with that narrow band of dark, dark blue (that’s rain away off yonder) … WOW. And just right of very bottom center is a young wild pony who recently left his family and is usually with a calm elder-ish bachelor but this evening was having fun (between peaceful-grazing energy-restoration periods) creating havoc among a few other widespread bands.
Storm at right heading back to his band after leaving a deposit on a stud pile on the road (where I am … really needing to leave as dark approaches but unwilling to leave the gorgeousity).
Other than sharpening, this pic is exactly as it came out of my phone’s most-excellent camera (how DID we survive without cameras in our phones that we can take to the wildest places on Earth?! I won’t be without my camera-cameras … but I do love my phone’s camera for the wide, wild shots). Nerd info: The other pix also had some shadow-lightening applied (with sharpening) to better see the horses in the foreground, but that’s it. WHO NEEDS AI when you have this kind of light happening right in front of you????
It’s straight-up magic, folks. Ma Nature is kind of a genius. 🙂 All I do is point and click. And share. 🙂
We didn’t get rain out of either of those storms … but we got *divine* and very fabulous rain Sunday morning!
(Thanks to Harry Potter for this post’s title/quote!)
Hold onto your paddles, folks, have I got some rainwater for you. 🙂
Brought to you courtesy of Mother Nature –> Southwest Colorado –> Disappointment Valley –> Spring Creek Basin:
A full water-catchment trough is always a good sign. Fortunately, though low (in the tank, uphill behind me), we’ve had enough rain lately to keep this trough full – and there have been a fair number of horses drinking here with the amazing grass around (don’t let the pic fool you; the galleta, in particular, is bonkers this year, along with the alkali sacaton). I may have explained this in the past, but it bears repeating: The triangular sheet of metal over the trough is an evaporation cover, designed to help slow evaporation of precious water in our (usually) dry climate. The shape of the cover is triangular so the horses have plenty of room to drink at the sides of the round trough.
The Flat Top pond looks small in this wide-angle view looking eastish across Spring Creek Basin, but although it has gotten pretty shallow in recent years, it’s a pretty good size.
Good thing I scouted the V-arroyo before I tried to cross it. Those are my tentative footprints in the pillowy, shoe-grabbing – and tire-stopping – mud in the center bottom of the pic. You might not think it’s too bad, but there’s a lot of water in/under that surface mud still, and it is NOT friendly to tires or shoes until it has a chance to seep deeper into the soil and dry out from the bottom up. Along the left side of the pic is the arroyo – we’re looking upstream. The bottom of the arroyo, where I’m standing on relatively firm ground, isn’t very wide (hence my name of the “V”-arroyo), and the road rises to my left – up a little water-carved bank that’s nothing like the wall still in place on the other side of the first Spring Creek crossing.
Holy Spring, err, RIVER! I know it’s hard to tell, but this is the first crossing of the usually-dry arroyo that is Spring Creek (when it’s not masquerading as a rainwater-swollen river). Yes, the other side is a road. 🙂 Well, it’s mostly a two-tiered wall; the right side of it is where I dug a channel in the wall the last time the creek ran (back in June) so I could get my ATV across and up and over. It has been widened by crazy people in a truck (I don’t know who … I don’t know anyone that silly/stupid/nutso), but it’s greatly eroded again and is going to need some custom shovel work. (And lowering of the water level. :)) The width here is probably about 25 yards? (Good darting distance.) And this water level is at least 4-5 feet below where it was at its highest/widest mark, behind me, so it’s already running with less volume than at its peak. (WoW!)
I took a lot of pix from here, and I wish I knew how to embed video; I’m still on a super-high from seeing all that water. Bear with me as I show you some upstream and downstream and high-vantage pix. (If you don’t think water in the desert is A BIG DEAL, you don’t live in a desert.)
Looking downstream. Note the two-tiered wall across the creek where the road is (should be). Most of the rocks at left are from previous flooding. But I will tell you, that kind of water can move BIG rocks. I have seen it, and I have moved big (enough) rocks out of the way of crossing in a vehicle or ATV. This is why the powers that be warn people against crossing flooded roads; that water literally grooves arroyos into our salt-desert landscape (milennia ago, this was under a giant ocean!).
Arroyo as defined by Merriam Webster: plural arroyos. 1. : a waterway (as a creek) in a dry region. 2. : an often dry gully or channel carved by water.). … Arroyos are a desert’s proof of water movement – that far bank/wall is much taller than I am. The wall where the road used to be is proof that they’re always changing – with more water.
Looking upstream. Note the water at far right; it was still finding ways to trickle along downstream.
A bit wider view from back up the road a bit. I mean … ?! 🙂 I knew, before ever I got there, that I wouldn’t be able to cross, but I did NOT know how river-esque Spring Creek would be. I love, love, love this place.
Similar view, but this shows the bend in the creek at right. … Try to follow me upstream: See McKenna Peak (the pyramid-shaped pointy peak)? Way back there is the source/start of Spring Creek, which – as you all know, being loyal, wonderful readers of this blog – drains Spring Creek BASIN (along with all its multitude of widely (and narrowly) and wildly variable tributary arroyos). As you may or may not know, the creek doesn’t roll in a straight line from there to here (or beyond/behind/downstream of me). So that bend goes around to the left – upstream of the southernmost *major* drainage/arroyo in the basin – and past another creek/arroyo crossing (below the dugout, if you’ve visited). It comes from the eastish side of the basin – with the northernmost *major* drainage/arroyo entering from the northish to also run back to (really from) the northeast. Are you still with me? There are three *major* drainages in Spring Creek Basin with Spring Creek being the lowest, middle drainage – named as the very-most-major drainage and namesake of the basin it drains.
Water is important here. Knowing how it flows is part of the importance. Back in the very-long-ago day, some other silly people – who apparently didn’t know about arroyos and the highly-erodable quality of the salt-desert soil – tried to dam Spring Creek just below the confluence of the third major arroyo. Thinking they would create a reservoir out of which to irrigate land for farming (what WERE they thinking?), they built a dam and dredged miles of irrigation ditch; the remains of both can still be seen. As the story goes, the first major rain of the (likely monsoon?) season brought water rolling like a river down every tiny arroyo, down to and through the big drainages, blasted a hole in the dam that likely had cost boatloads of blood and sweat and resulted in tears (!) … and they went away *disappointed* (har har). … Mother Nature always wins, folks.
Well, I knew better than to attempt the crossing of Spring Creek Basin’s *river* (without more rain … which we’re getting again as I type … the creek would likely be done flowing within 24 hours … though the water will last in pockets and seeps for a good long while), so despite the big group of a couple of bands of mustangs not far away, I headed out, already on a great big, marvelous high.
What you’re looking at in the pic above is our crazy-good grass, which amazes me because of the little – but always valuable – rain we’ve gotten this summer (this year, really; it’s been pretty darn dry since *last* year). The galleta grass is particularly bonkers this year, along with the sand dropseed and/or alkali sacaton (very similar in appearance). This is from right inside the basin’s main/western boundary entrance looking eastish.
From here, my next destination was the south rim of Spring Creek canyon, through which water runs out of Spring Creek Basin, out across lower Disappointment Valley and into Disappointment Creek, which delivers water – along with a “healthy” (aka large) dose of salt and sediment (apologies) – to the grand and spectacular Dolores River.
Spring Creek, draining Spring Creek Basin. 🙂 Around the near (left) bend, before the far bend, there’s a fence across the wide-open low ground and a water gap across the creek; that’s the basin’s western boundary. Way yonder, on the horizon, on the far side of the farthest rimrock and even beyond that blue-grey tide of rain, is the south shoulder of eastern Utah’s La Sal Mountains.
Not even my phone’s widest angle is wide enough to take in all the gorgeousity of Spring Creek through its canyon, so here’s another bit of view that takes in more of the upstream canyon area. Spring Creek Basin stretches north (straight ahead of me) and east (to my right) and south (behind me) from this perspective on the canyon’s south rim.
Those layers. The canyon is neither super deep nor particularly long. But it is so gorgeous.
In just the short time I walked out and spent along the rim, the storm to the west was already passing.
Looking upstream across the heart of Spring Creek Basin, where another storm loomed on the northeastern/eastern/southeastern horizon.
And because this is a blog about the wild horses of Spring Creek Basin, there IS a mustang out there, though I’m not sure he’s visible. As far as I know, the young mister is the only one to have crossed the creek (within view, anyway). 🙂
Grow, grass, grow!
Better late than never (this was the last day of specific rain in the forecast). I think we can be said to have gotten some monsoon rains this summer. Despite all the worry leading to this day (yesterday), soooo amazingly grateful. 🙂
* Thanks to Charley Pride for the inspiration behind this post’s title – “(High on a) Mountain of Love.”
A recent selection of post-rain images:
The water trough at the main/original water catchment is full again. The tank has about 3 feet of water. It has been mostly dry with a poor winter and without much rain.
Post-rain grass growth! If you live east of the Rockies and in places where it, you know, rains, this might look sparse. … To us, it looks lush and divine! And I will tell you, the mustangs are going after it with gusto!
Do you see the pillar of light? The clouds were heavy the last part of the day (and they and the breeze dropped the mercury comfortably), but then, at THE very end of the day, the sun found a window, and it lit up the basin.
Did you think I was exaggerating? 🙂 As usual, the pic doesn’t do justice to the colors of reality.
I couldn’t decide between the really long, wide view or the slightly zoomed-in view, so you get both. 🙂
Just another glorious day in Spring Creek Basin. I promise, pix of ponies are on the way.
P.S. Happy July. 🙂
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 