Rainbow season.

13 09 2025

Photographers love stormy conditions. Is it any wonder?

Am I right?

A bit wider perspective.

Mustangs were around, but they were not as cooperative as a person could wish with that amazing background ever-changing. 🙂

Flash and his band were grazing from the still-sunny side of the bowl to the already-shady side of the bowl (what I call the series of open areas between ridges in the far northwest). I was uphill of them, which made it hard to also capture the very faint rainbow in the southeastern sky. And this was quite a bit later from the first two pix.

Gaia lingered longest (thanks, girl), but she mostly gave me butt shots (thanks, girl!). 🙂 This one shows more of the rain-mist behind the rainbow.

And a last image from nearly last light … just a hint of a prism in a couple of sections in the sky at right. I mean … stunning!

We’ve gotten a few little rain waves the last couple of days. “Rain” might be overstating things a bit, as they’ve been really more like 10- to 15-minute drizzles. The ground soaks up that moisture incredibly quickly, and it’s dry very soon afterward. But we’ll take it, and the night I took the above images, I found a pond with water. Actual water. 🙂 Joy!


Comments : 4 Comments »

Categories : Colorado, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Rainbow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte

Pre-rainbow storm watching

12 09 2025

Zowie America! That LIGHT!

The rainbow would start to form farther south/right not long after these pix were taken, as the storm was passing to the north (left) and dissipating. It never did grow to either blazing brilliance or a full arc. The left side was even more faint than the right side (which also was trying to double-arc), but if it had fully arc’d, it would have been HUGE.

No rain on us, but chances are better through Saturday?!


Comments : 9 Comments »

Categories : McKenna Peak, Rain, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte

Very short, very needed

8 09 2025

A hard, brief storm passed through Disappointment Valley and Spring Creek Basin (and the whole local area) Saturday, so you know what that means:

It’s hard to tell in this still image, but that water is moving. It’s flowing toward me along the ditch at left from just another 100 or so yards up the road (this is Road K20E, just east of Road 19Q). In some places, it had already stopped running, but the ditches were still soggy. There was more evidence of it having washed across the road farther along toward the basin (you can see the familiar horizon with the rimrocks, Filly Peak, McKenna Peak, Temple Butte, submarine ridge and Brumley Point rain-darkened (!) in the distance as the storm recedes to the east and southeast.

And of course, I knew what I’d find within Spring Creek Basin:

We had a number of these last year. This year, not so much. … ALWAYS fabulous to see water running across the first (as you come to it) Spring Creek crossing. It was already receding when I reached it in late afternoon, but the water (very muddy) was happily gurgling along.

From downstream a bit from the crossing (you can see it at just-left-of-top-center) looking upstream. There’s a rocky “beach” to the right that’s at least as wide as the creek bed itself, and it doesn’t look as though that flooded this time.

And from the same spot as above, now looking downstream. There’s a big curve straight ahead, and around that a bit is a seep that has water fairly consistently where the horses like to drink.

At most, floods like these last maybe 24 hours. This one probably – maybe – lasted 12? The rain came down pretty hard, but it didn’t last very long. And the rain, as hard as it was, didn’t penetrate very deep into the soil; an inch – maybe? We need a day(s)long rain that just sooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaks in deeply. That’s what the fragile, drought-stressed vegetation needs.

All the mustangs I saw were on the north side of the creek, and I didn’t cross it. 🙂 Can’t wait to see the evidence elsewhere in the basin when I *can* get across the muddy arroyo!


Comments : 9 Comments »

Categories : Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Rain, Spring Creek, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte

Drama

7 09 2025

Heading to water. Chipeta is showing her age (she’s at least 20 now), but she still looks beautiful, especially under that dramatic sky. 🙂


Comments : 10 Comments »

Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte

Racin’ the rain

6 09 2025

Cue the angels:

As I was wandering the desert (seriously), hoping that tonight (which was last night) would be the night the clouds would part and I would get to see the moon rise … the clouds DID part, and a rainbow DID shine! I ask you: How does that happen!?!? 🙂 I’m not complaining, mind you, but Mother Nature is a wondrous, mysterious creature.

And then, this:

My desert wandering paid off!

If I ever get those glorious scenes with a gorgeous mustang right in my foreground, I’m going to keel right over without being able to hit the shutter even once, probably. 😉

This was the last night to get the moon rising with the sun only very recently set. When the moon is actually full on Sunday (happy lunar eclipse if you’re on the other side of our world from North America!), it’ll be rising in a dark sky.

But last night, as I walked away (OK, I might have been doing as much of an Olympic race-walk as I possibly could with a camera pack on my back, binoculars in the case on my front and carrying a monopod that really is not a hiking stick), THIS was hustling me along (and yes, there was lightning):

See the moon rising above Temple Butte and McKenna Peak and submarine ridge at lower right?

Conclusion: Sometimes the rainbows come and go well before the post-sunset rain. 🙂 (And I think the valley got fairly widespread (though light) rain!)

Happy, happy!


Comments : 13 Comments »

Categories : Colorado, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Moon, Rain, Rainbow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte

Streaking

5 09 2025

Rain – or perhaps more likely, virga – catching the western light over the southern ridge of Disappointment Valley from about mid(ish)-Spring Creek Basin. None of that for us yesterday, but we have chances today and Saturday.

How often do you get the rising moon and a rainbow (and not a moonbow!) in the same image? I actually don’t know, but both are visible in this pic … though both are extremely faint and hard to see. The rainbow is nearly impossible to see – at the right side of the pic, nearly vertical – and it was suuuuuuuper faint in reality, too. But as I was nearly stumped (again!) by clouds to see the moonrise, I shot it anyway. 🙂

But the MOST crazy pic of last night:

I’d love to say I planned the above image … but I didn’t! I was taking pix of the moon, high in the sky, between cloud layers (! can’t we have some rain, please, with those clouds??), and the plane photobombed my moon!!!! HA! The dark streak behind it is its contrail. I’m astounded that the moon is as sharp as it is because I’d only aimed and started hitting the shutter when the plane zoomed by.

The world is a wondrous place. 🙂 Especially with mustangs … not pictured, but always there.


Comments : 17 Comments »

Categories : Colorado, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Moon, Rain, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte

Nature for the win

30 08 2025

That’s rain beyond Tenaz. 🙂

It wasn’t in the forecast. Of the previous six days that had rain chances, we got rain only one of those days. The rain yesterday was *wildly* variable, even just over Spring Creek Basin. Some places didn’t anything; some got something.

We’ll take anything, anytime. 🙂


Comments : 12 Comments »

Categories : McKenna Peak, Rain, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte

Clearing

28 08 2025

Storms don’t last long here; rain showers don’t linger. The sky clears quickly.

Usually.

The above is the eastern horizon beyond Spring Creek Basin from not very far below the western rimrock boundary as the last storm (Tuesday morning) cleared. The rain was in the morning; the pic is from early afternoon.

Wowza.

Mustangs were grazing below me, but I couldn’t get them in the view until Buckeye had a chat with Maiku.


Comments : 9 Comments »

Categories : Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Filly Peak, McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte

Damp

27 08 2025

It may not look very damp, but it was – after a quarter of an inch of rain that morning! McKenna Peak and Temple Butte were wreathed in clouds (very unusually) until early afternoon, and this doesn’t capture that, but Tenaz is the star of the show anyway. 🙂

That gives us 0.35 inch of rain (Friday afternoon and Tuesday morning), which is more than we’ve gotten in about three months? At least. The ground still is pretty dry under the top layer of dampened soil, but it has to help the vegetation (and the water catchments, too).


Comments : 9 Comments »

Categories : Filly Peak, McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte

‘Rain is a good thing’

26 08 2025

There are places where the horses drink where they also can roll and get muddy, but I like to hope that Cassidy Rain’s “adobe coat” (thank you, Sue!) is from anywhere in the whole wide basin that got rain on Friday. The damp ground didn’t last long, but it was a relief, nonetheless.

(Thanks to Luke Bryan for the title of today’s post: “Rain IS a good thing“!)


Comments : 13 Comments »

Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte

« Previous Entries Next Entries »