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!
In yesterday’s post, I promised for today’s post pix of a fairly stunning storm system that blew up over Disappointment Valley in the mid-or-so afternoon through sunset. This will be a photo-heavy (heavy on the heavy) post. The pix also are all from my phone. The immense scale simply wasn’t possible to capture with my long lens and narrow range of view. A few times, I wished I’d gone to the effort of getting my camera out of my backpack … but most of the time, I was too afraid to miss one second of what was happening, and, again, the sheer width of scale of the storm’s coverage across the horizon(s) was just too, well, wide.
I hate to be one of those telling you to “read through till the end” for the best part, but … well, let me know whether the final pix, of sunset light in the EAST, were worth waiting for.
Onward!
As wide a field of view as my phone can capture, it took four images, stitched into a panorama, to produce this image, looking from southeast at right to north-northeast at left. So if possible, imagine the scene not as a flat, two-dimensional view but as a curved (?) view. The storm definitely was coming from the southeast and moving north (left) … and around/beyond the basin, across the north, to the west? I sat for a long time at the main/original catchment watching it and taking pix as the sky evolved – in sunshine the entire time.
This was the first pic I actually took. There’s a pretty obvious downpour straight ahead, which is basically east-northeastish. It was not raining over Spring Creek Basin at this point, but the clouds were definitely shading the far, whole eastern horizon. Thunder was rumbling now and then, but I never saw lightning. The vast majority of the basin was under sunlight. There ARE mustangs way, way out, at the leftish side of the image.
A little more detail of the rain running across the landscape from near/over (?) Benchmark Lookout (at the leftish side of the dark hump of “hill” at far right) across upper Disappointment Valley and beyond Temple Butte (the edge of the promontory is just spotlit by a bit of sunlight).
And swinging a bit more to look east.
Meanwhile, a lighter rain system was moving north to the northWEST. You might be able to make out Utah’s La Sal Mountains through the curtain of rain (way) beyond Spring Creek canyon.
This is roughly what that looked like on the radar (a little delayed, I think). The blue dot was me, in the middle, in the sunshine. 🙂
There are the mountains; see ’em? I think the rain was moving across lower Disappointment Valley and maybe/probably not quite as far west as Utah. I’ve been in the same place taking all these pix (I sat there for quite a long time): at the road by the fenced-enclosed aprons that catch rain (and snow in the winter) and direct that water down to the 12,000-gallon green steel tank … and from there to the main water trough you can see downhill and to the right of the tank. (The farther, smaller, black trough is wired off because it’s a lot smaller, and darker, and the horses don’t prefer it. The big trough is the main trough. You can’t quite tell from this distance, but it has a triangular metal cover over it that enables the horses to get to the water and also helps prevent evaporation (or better than it would be if uncovered).)
And looking southeastish again. Apologies (not really) for the redundant pix … but this is one of my favorite views in the whole, great, wide and wild world … especially when it includes rain!
See how DARK it got to the northeast? Again, that’s beyond Spring Creek Basin – at least at this point (spoiler alert). But see that lit “column” of rain? Wild? I spent a lot of time and phone space taking pix of that cool thing as it moved with the storm system across the northern horizon toward the west (and I was in sunshine all the while).
Checking the progress of the rain to the east-southeast again. At this point, I think it was getting closer to Temple Butte – the rain, not just the shade of the rain clouds.
Another look up to the northeastish at that remarkable flame of spotlit rain. Notice, too, that we’re starting to get a great shadow of clouds over a great portion of the basin now. (I promise there were mustangs out there; I was watching about five bands way, way out while I watched the spectacular sky-show.)
I mean …
… it was …
… just soooooo …
… COOL!
Checking northwest again, over the canyon. That’s the north side at right, and you can just see part of the south side at far left. It’s not that wide; it curves a lot.
Ah! Rain has made it far enough west to cover Temple Butte (the promontory), at least, and maybe reaching McKenna Peak (the pyramid) and the eastern part of Spring Creek Basin. But note how sunny it still is.
Another very wide-angle view (just one frame). At farthest right, definitely getting rained on now: Temple Butte and McKenna Peak. At left, the remnants of that crazy … I don’t even know what to call that?! Looking like someone was shining a gigantic spotlight from the ground to the heavens. And still, I’m sitting in the sunshine.
At that point, I decided to head out. I wasn’t sure about crossing the V-arroyo (it gets pretty pillowy-muddy in heavy rain and is difficult to impossible to cross in that state), and most of the horses were well north of that point – and that’s before you even get to the first Spring Creek crossing. While thunder had been rumbling like a slightly disgruntled giant, I hadn’t seen any lightning, but in the wide open, I have a healthy respect for it (and a recent encounter of a near-simultaneous lightning-strike-thunder-CRACK is pretty close to front of mind lately).
Now I’m at Chrome’s Point in the far western part of Spring Creek Basin, and rain definitely is falling within the basin’s boundaries to the east. If you zoom in on Temple Butte and McKenna Peak, below the left base of McKenna in the golden-landscape area, you’ll see the fenced-in water-catchment aprons (looks a bit like a tennis court). On the road, just left of the far side of the fence corner is where I sat to take all the photos above this one.
And from Chrome’s Point looking northish (leftish is almost directly northish). Can you tell that the storm was moving across our north to the west (left)? I know that if you’re not familiar with the area, it’s hard!
So I left the basin thinking “what a great show put on by Mother Nature!” And also that at least the eastern-northeastern part of the basin looked to be getting some of the good wet stuff (which was not in the forecast, by the way). …
Yowza! That’s RAIN. Over SPRING CREEK BASIN! This is looking east while heading south on Disappointment Road, well west of the basin. …
Wait. What is that … ?
What that, you ask? THAT that!
It’s a DUST DEVIL. … With pouring rain in the background! Just like the weird rain column seen earlier from inside Spring Creek Basin, this dust devil was illuminated by the sunlight hitting that part of Disappointment Valley west of Spring Creek Basin (the ridge topped by rimrock at far right is part of the basin’s western boundary). See the far-far ridgeline curtained by rain? That’s the very same northeastern ridge that meets the sky in the previous pix taken within Spring Creek Basin.
I was so wowed that I was standing in the middle of the road holding my phone up and out in the classic pose as a truck was approaching. Fortunately, it was someone who knows me and knows my photo-centricity, and he kindly did not run me over. 🙂
Kinda great for zilch on the rain front in the forecast, eh? 🙂 And I will tell you that the ground was still satisfyingly damp out in the basin last night (as you read this), and now we have another day or three or five (who really knows?!) of rain chances in the forecast.
See the rainbow prism? That’s directly over Filly Peak in Spring Creek Basin.
Did I mention there’s snow again on the mountains on our northwestern horizon (Utah’s La Sals)? As a point of interest, Mount Peale is the highest peak in the range at “12,721 to 12,726 feet.” Moab is on the other side.
There was just about every bit of light imaginable during the time I watched the storm pass: glorious sunlight to dappled light to ominous rain-darkness. Something else interesting? I never got so much as sprinkled on, no matter where I was.
Oh yeah, and the light that produced multi-colored rainbow prisms (can you call it a rainbow if it doesn’t form a bow?). I think there were at least five, maybe six of these prisms. None formed a complete rainbow (if you can believe it), and none of them lasted very long … except this next one:
See the rainbow forming at upper left? (And check out that spotlight at farthest right!) Unfortunately, the prism was faint while the spotlight was on Buck Knob and its vibrant redrock layers, but, um, WOW.
It’s getting a little more visible …
The. Light. Was. Phenomenal.
The cottonwoods along the bottom of this pic line Disappointment Creek. Spring Creek is farther north, running out of Spring Creek Basin, which is to the right/east. They both run westish; Spring Creek runs into Disappointment Creek, and, eventually, FARTHER west, Disappointment Creek carries all its salt and sediment into the Dolores River. This view is looking purty near north. The shorter, yellow-y-er (that’s a word, creatively speaking) vegetation is willow and maybe some rabbitbrush/chamisa, too. The cottonwoods at this elevation are just starting to go gold.
Do you start to see why there are so many pix in this post?! The light KEPT CHANGING. What the heck are those beams right of center?! I never did figure it out.
Wide-wide view for perspective. The road runs straight east here.
And on I went up-valley (to the southeast). I mean, who knew what else Mother Nature had in store?
Disappointment Creek. Picture NO water here, and that’s what it usually looks like. This was when I first realized how heavy the rain must have been that I’d seen earlier … remember the very first pix at the top of this post? Spring Creek Basin is across the road (that I’m on) to the left.
It’s really hard to understand how this is such an astounding view if you don’t know what it usually looks like, but for one thing, there are usually giant rocks visible in the creek bed there.
This is Black Snag Road; Disappointment Road is about 100 yards behind me. … Actually, this is Disappointment Creek – err, river – making fun of the idea of there being a road under that rollin’ water (let alone a culvert … ha ha ha!?). This is where I wish I was adept at video and/or even knowing how to insert it. Because the sheer volume of NOISE (let alone water) was INCREDIBLE. Larry W. is the Dolores County road guy for this part of Disappointment Road; I couldn’t help but think of him while I watched this; it will fall to him to fix this … eventually.
That pile of dark dirt is sort of the edge of … well … where the water shouldn’t have gone around?! Seriously, do not mess with Mother Nature. She makes her own paths.
I’m not entirely sure where those rocks would have come from. I hadn’t been down to look at the crossing for quite a while until this moment, but the road is sort of … there.
It was hard to take a still pic that conveyed the noise and just sheer quantity of water rolling through the *ahem* creek bed. You see the rocks … and up to the right is a WAVE of mud-water. I think the culvert is sort of in that area? And/or rocks meant to stabilize it and the edge of the road.
Disappointment River. 🙂 Seriously.
Meanwhile, this was happening behind me (as I looked at the river, err, creek crossing); looking in this direction, the creek is behind me. Disappointment Road runs across the base of the pic; down-valley (northwestish) is left, and up-valley (southeastish) is right. The fence along the road – the boundary of Spring Creek Basin – is visible at left and right. The foreground is part of Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, but Temple Butte – lit up at right – is outside the basin, as is McKenna Peak, the tip and eroded slopes of which are visible at left.
Nope, it was not over!
Disappointment Creek flowing downstream from just upstream of the Black Snag Road crossing.
It was *this* close to sunset. 🙂
Mother Nature wasn’t close to done for the day.
I mean … can you die of absolute, heart-bursting joy at the gorgeousity of the world?! Hopefully not; too much yet to see. I hope you’ve stuck with me. … Really, it gets BETTER.
Are you sitting down? You might want to sit down.
As I went back down-valley, THAT was happening behind me. Ahead of me (behind me as I take these pix), to the west, the clouds were nearly gone, the sky nearly clear again. The color was all back to the east. (Note: These horses are not in Spring Creek Basin. I’ve never crossed over here, but this sunset was too amazing not to share, and this is where I was when I saw it.)
My jaw might have been on the ground. I hope you find these colors and cloud shapes impressive. … The pix don’t really do it justice; it was one of the top most spectacular sunsets I’ve seen in my life.
I might finally have run out of words.
Was it worth it? 🙂
WHAT. A. DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mama Nature, I never cease to be amazed. Keep on rockin’, Lady.
While it doesn’t look much like the clouds are clearing in this pic taken yesterday morning, the rain system *was* clearing, and I was out to find some drama. Chipeta provided the peace. 🙂
“Follow the … ” mustangs! (No, not spiders; that’s Harry Potter, and we weren’t looking for a basilisk.)
Most of the coolest things I’ve found in Spring Creek Basin are a result of following the mustangs. They know all the best places.
Am I right, or am I right?! The last time I’d been to this pond was much earlier in the summer, and it was dry.
Isn’t it a divine sight, all that lovely, rippling water?
Water is gold in the West. To know that we’ve gotten enough rain now this year to fill this pond fills ME with immense joy and relief and gratitude.
The horses drank their fill and moseyed farther on to chase the green. … And speaking of green …
To my surprise (the horses weren’t phased), this mallard drake landed on the water right in front of us!
No matter how many times I see ducks on our desert ponds, I think I will never cease being surprised! And grateful that they find an oasis in the otherwise dry landscape.
The sun was fairly low on the western horizon, and fortunately, he was still lit by sunlight despite the berm/bank of the pond and a distant hill between us and that horizon. Depending on how he turned, his head feathers flashed iridescent green or nearly black. No hen landed with him, and I didn’t see one circling.
Unfortunately, the sun was sinking as fast as it does, and I had a fair walk back to the road, and when I stood up, the drake lifted off from the water into the sky.
I hope he returned to that place of safety … maybe with a hen.
As I type the draft of this post, it’s raining, which means more fresh water for the ponds, the catchments, the vegetation, even recharging the seeps …
… like this one. That’s bedrock, a layer of shale (?) in the foreground (see my toe), and you can see the layer of it around the left side in the lower wall of the arroyo. Underground water hits these rock layers and comes to the surface, and the horses make good use of that water (note the hoofprints; a band had been drinking there as I walked up to the pond). There’s at least a 2-foot drop between the rock I’m standing on and the water in the bed of the arroyo as it continues, where it runs down a slight slope, as it might (hopefully) do with this rain!
If these kids are representative of the country’s young folks, we’re all gonna be OK. 🙂
Earlier this week, Disappointment Valley and Spring Creek Basin – and one mustang band! – played host to a group of eighth-graders from Boulder’s Watershed School and three of their teachers. They got to see Buckeye’s band after a long drive from Meeker, where they’d camped after a great visit to the Wild Horse Refuge near Craig. Then they camped above Disappointment Creek, just outside Spring Creek Basin. In the morning, BLM range specialist and herd manager Anton Rambur and range tech Laura Heaton arrived to lead the students in a vegetation-monitoring project up the same hill. Tres Rios Field Office Manager Derek Padilla also came out to see and talk to the kids about the variety of land management that happens throughout BLM public lands in Southwest Colorado.
The kids spread out in small groups and pairs to conduct their utilization (grazed/ungrazed bits of galleta (a native, warm-season grass that’s growing after the recent rains) along lines of five steps at a time) under the watchful eye of Buckeye and the band.
And then, while they listened to Laura and Anton guide them about how to fill out their sheets with the information they’d gathered, Buckeye decided that he and the band were ready for their morning drink … which meant ambling up the trail … and giving the kids a good check-over … before heading down the other side of the hill to the water catchment.
Top THAT, any other school trip ever, anywhere! 🙂
We stayed up top to listen to Derek and give the horses a chance to get down the hill, to the catchment to drink the lovely fresh rainwater in the trough … and they came up a different trail back to the top of the hill, checked us out again and returned to grazing.
Oh, my lovely, wonderful, awesome and amazing mustangs. 🙂 You do me SO proud!
Then back down to the corrals and buses, where Anton and Laura helped them do the math involved in figuring out how much the horses are grazing in that area of the basin. At the end, I heard numbers ranging anywhere from 7 percent to 50 percent use/grazed plants, so even in our drought, we’re in good shape for the horses not eating everything in their paths. And the students learned a little bit about what BLM folks are looking at to manage the rangelands that support wild horses – and other grazing/browsing wildlife like elk, deer and pronghorns.
I got to talk more about PZP and show off my darting rifle and let some of the kids see how light it is and how quiet (no darts involved!). And I marveled the whole time at the insightful, curious questions the kids asked and the answers Anton and Laura gave to provide the kids with a well-rounded picture of what it takes to manage a herd of wild horses on public land in Colorado.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-mazing!
Here follow a load of pix of Watershed School students and teachers Amy, Diana and Pete, BLM’ers Laura, Anton and Derek … and the mustangs they got to see:
Laura points out characteristics of grasses to students. We saw past-prime cheat grass, and they concentrated on newly growing galleta. (We also saw Indian ricegrass, grama grass, alkali sacaton and/or sand dropseed (my hat is off to you if you can look at the latter two and tell them apart!)
Students examine a clump of grass that shows last year’s growth as well as recent growth.
Laura and Anton talk about how to measure clumps of grass. The idea was that the students walked five steps in a line, measured galleta at their toe or within reach … then another five steps … until they’d measured 10 samples. Teacher Amy is in the foreground (this is the second time she has brought one of her eighth-grade humanities classes to Spring Creek Basin; the last time, it poured rain! as you can see in these pix, they lucked out with spectacular October weather), and teacher Pete is in the brown hoodie and camp. … Start to notice the “little white dots” in the distance.
Teacher Diana is at right while the students watch Laura measure the grass clump. For a little perspective, I’m facing nearly directly north toward the main, west-ish part of Spring Creek Basin.
No mistaking that horizon. 🙂 Laura helps one of the small groups of students with their monitoring while two other groups walk their lines in the background.
Boys walk their line with the basin’s south-facing rimrocks in the near distance and Utah’s La Sal Mountains in the far distance.
It’s hard to get a whole lot farther from Boulder than Disappointment Valley (OK, we’re not the *farthest* southwest corner of the state), but students were focused on the vegetation and their project. How cool is it that they’re able to take trips like this instead of learning from books only, only in a classroom?
Another pair walking their line with other groups in the distance. See that GREEN grass? Yeah, thank you, RAIN! A little goes a long way in this high desert.
Diana follows the boys back up the hill after they finished their line. Can’t get enough of that scenery.
All gathered again to ensure they’d filled out their sheets well. … There was math to come!
These city students were not afraid to drop to the ground among the grasses and shadscale and four-wing saltbush – and cacti!
Laura, left, and teachers Amy and Diana helped the kids with their utilization sheets (these are the same that BLM employees use while out monitoring rangelands). They’re a little hard to see (wide-angle lens, not my big gun), but look straight out over the kids’ heads. …
We were being watched!
Just like the evening before, Buckeye’s band was over the top of this hill, down toward the north. Here, they’re a little east of where they’d been previously. The previous evening, after they arrived, I hiked the kids out to the trees – there’s a little arroyo that starts there – and we picked up the trail to the west, which we took a bit farther left of where the horses are seen here.
I’m not sure how long we’d been on the hill, but we weren’t in a hurry, and the students were absorbed in their project. While they worked, I took pix and kept an eye on Buckeye’s band to gauge their comfort level (they were at least a few hundred yards away from us). By about this time, as the students were nearing the completion of the monitoring part of their project, I started to notice that the full band was appearing, and Buckeye was inching a bit closer. … And then it hit me: They want to make a trip up and over the hill and down to the catchment trough for their morning drink. Sure enough, they walked on up the trail, but where I thought they’d veer off more to the west and go down the trail I brought the kids up the evening before, those curious ponies came right up the trail to where the students were gathered! I cautioned everybody to just sit tight and stay fairly quiet and let the horses explore this mass of humanity on their usual empty route to water.
And the gathered group of students and adults got the mustang sighting of their lives. 🙂
Pretty amazing, eh? 🙂
While we were watching Buckeye’s band watching US, Tres Rios Field Office Manager Derek Padilla hiked up the hill to join us. He talked to the students about the variety of jobs available with the Bureau of Land Management (and U.S. Forest Service, where he spent the first 27 years of his 30-year land-management career) and the variety of ways BLM’ers manage the multiples uses that happen on public lands.
He and Buckeye might have worked it out between themselves because the band had plenty of time to head down the hill to water, drink and then return up a different trail.
After one last farewell to the ponies, the group returned down the hill to the buses to complete the math (!) part of the project and have some lunch and a last round of questions and answers with Laura and Anton.
Yes, math does have real-world applications. 🙂 Laura and Anton helped students with the formulas to calculate the results of their utilization (grazed/ungrazed) survey. Results: The horses have plenty of forage, even after our stressful droughty summer. Whew.
Before they left, at least one of the teachers and a few of the students got to check out my darting rifle. It’s very lightweight, and it fires off of a CO2 cartridge (pressurized to the distance of a mare). NOTE: NO DARTS WERE IN THE RIFLE. I let them put some air in the rifle and pull the trigger to hear the sound and have the feel of it. A surprise to a couple: No kick. 🙂
Kudos to these kids and their teachers for thinking outside the box and creating the experiential learning experiences Watershed School is known for. *I* sure never got to visit wild horses as part of any class trip, and I attended lots of schools in many states and Germany! They are super curious and intelligent and asked some of the best questions I’d ever heard – and I get a LOT of questions and have a lot of answers. Speaking for myself (I’m sure Laura and Anton and Derek would agree): We had a blast introducing these young folks to Disappointment Valley, Spring Creek Basin and (at least a few of) our amazing mustangs. 🙂
You’re welcome back any time!
Thank you so much to these Watershed School teachers and students, and to Anton, Laura and Derek, and (I have to say it) to my boy Buckeye and his girls, for making this a fantastic visit and learning experience in Spring Creek Basin!
Heading up to one of the water catchments the other day, I was surprised to see a couple of pronghorn does heading on up past a band of horses that were already leaving the trough and also making their way to the top of the hill. I didn’t see them (any of them) drinking, but I *know* the horses had been, and I really hope the pronghorns are making use of the fresh rainwater, too.
No pix of the pronghorns and the horses together because they were far-ish, and I was still huffing and puffing my way up the hill, and I didn’t stop to offload and unload my pack. So what follows are sightings of the pronghorns after I was up and over the top, with another (second) band.
By the time I got atop the hill and was moving down toward a band of mustangs, I caught sight of one of the pronghorn does already down the broad other side.
My lens swung between horses and pronghorn, and I wondered where the other pronghorn had gone.
But for a while, only the one doe was visible, watching me watch the mustangs (and her).
She eventually went out of sight, and I figured that was the last I’d see of her. … Until she showed up with the second doe, walking not so much toward me but on a trajectory that was going to take them past me a lot closer than they had been. And then the second doe turned to look behind them – definitely NOT at the horses – and I started to wonder what SHE was looking at.
Ah ha! Mister handsome!
This shows his impressive horns better. And despite the fact that males shed the *outer* horns, they are horns, not antlers.
More from Google AI:
The Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) is North America’s fastest land mammal, capable of reaching speeds up to 55–60 mph.
Physical Characteristics & Speed
Speed: Reaches top speeds of 55 to 60 mph, making it the second-fastest land animal globally (after the cheetah).
Anatomy: Features an oversized windpipe, heart, and lungs that process massive amounts of oxygen.
Horns: Possesses unique branched, pronged horns with a keratin sheath over a bony core that males shed annually.
Vision: Equipped with large eyes set high on the skull, providing a 320-degree field of vision to spot danger from miles away.
Habitat & Range
Geography: Endemic to the open plains, grasslands, and semidesert shrublands of western and central North America.
Local Presence: In Colorado Parks and Wildlife, they are commonly found on the eastern plains, mountain parks, and western shrublands.
Migration: Some herds migrate hundreds of miles seasonally to avoid deep winter snow that blocks access to food.
Diet & Behavior
Diet: Herbivores that primarily eat forbs (flowering plants), grasses, and shrubs like sagebrush (which they can digest despite its toxicity to other ungulates).
Reproduction: Mating occurs in early autumn (September), and females typically give birth to twin fawns in late May or June.
Predators: Vulnerable to coyotes, bobcats, wolves, bears, and golden eagles, which primarily target young fawns.
Pronghorns are fascinating critters. They’re not very widespread here, and there aren’t very many of them. Thankfully, there’s no hunting of pronghorns in our part of Colorado because there just aren’t very many. While I see them fairly often, I think there are only around 30ish. We do have coyotes and golden eagles, but in the open reaches of Disappointment Valley, those likely are their only predators. That said, there don’t ever seem to be *more* of them year to year.
From Wikipedia: “The pronghorn (UK: /ˈprɒŋ.hɔːrn/, US: /ˈprɔːŋ.-/)[4] (Antilocapra americana) is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America. Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American antelope, prong buck, pronghorn antelope, and prairie antelope,[5] because it closely resembles the antelopes of the Old World and fills a similar ecological niche due to parallel evolution.[6] It is the only surviving member of the familyAntilocapridae.[7]“
“The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the Americas, with running speeds up to 55 mph (88.5 km/h).” And if you’re lucky enough to see them, you can easily believe that. Even at what pronghorns themselves might consider “an easy lope,” they are FAST.
And no, he is not due to foal (him being a stallion and all). 🙂
He’s (still) not very tall, but wowza, is he an actual hunk of mustang! He spends his time grazing either alone or with another young friend (and I thought that little guy was stout until I saw them side by side).
Gosh, he’s handsome. I think daddy Hollywood would be proud of his little man.
