Apologies for the late post this morning; last night’s storms took out my electricity! Very glad of the rain … shown above making its way into Disappointment Valley southeast of southeastern Spring Creek Basin. Seneca really didn’t think she wanted to help show off the view and the rain, but she did an amazing job of it, of course. 🙂
The great thing about the rain is that it wasn’t even in the forecast, so it was a *very* pleasant (understatement) surprise!
Between one thing and another (including some more sprinkles and thunder/lightning risks after the big rain Tuesday night), it took me three days to get out to Spring Creek Basin to check on the state of things. Only parts of the arroyos – Spring Creek above – were still damp, and this isn’t even close to as rearranged as I’ve seen Spring Creek and this crossing after a big rain over Spring Creek Basin. I’ve been turning the valve to one trough on and off manually because part of the float is broken, and I hope to report soon that we’ve fixed that. Fortunately, there’s plenty of water in the tanks to fill the trough pretty quickly (good pressure).
And kicking right on the heels of that encouraging news, some really awful news again: One of the two firefighters injured when Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson and Sydney Watson were killed fighting the Knowles Fire, which merged into the Snyder Fire, has died. Nathan Matthews, 43, from Nebraska, died Friday. No details are being released about the second injured firefighter to protect the privacy of that person and their family. Prayers are with them all, along with the family of Nicholas Dale, the Canadian pilot killed while fighting the Gold Mountain Fire near Ouray.
The Ferris Fire is thankfully 97 percent contained, and progress continues with suppression repair work, especially along roads affected by the fire.
These pix are a poor representation of the ASTOUNDING sunset Monday as rain moved across Disappointment Valley’s western/northwestern horizon at sunset. It was one of the most amazing sunsets I think I’ve ever seen (and I’ve been blessed to see a lot of those).
Rain = literally, the lifeblood of the desert.
The cottonwoods in the near(ish) foreground line (dry) Disappointment Creek. This is looking northwestish toward neighbor Utah’s La Sal Mountains. You can just barely see one of the shoulders of one of the mountains through the rain. Actual sunset is at far left.
Amazing view a little closer/zoomed. I HOPE that rain was actually finding soil.
Backed out again, and you can see a bit more of the mountains through the curtain of rain.
The LIGHT!!! Kept getting getting better as the sun neared the horizon and even disappeared (from my perspective).
Sheer luck: That downpour is lit up by a lightning strike!
Tuesday afternoon and evening, Disappointment Valley is getting multiple little waves of rain. Super grateful.
There have been multiple road closures because of mudslides in the region (pretty much all of western Colorado). Be careful out there!
We don’t do things by halves here in Colorado.
Smoke from wildfires? Unfortunately.
Spectacular sky from incoming storm days later? You betcha.
From Spring Creek Basin’s western rimrock boundary looking southeast at the very end of yesterday.
Looking east from the same place. The storm was to the north – our left as we’re looking out over the basin here.
One of the most spectacular jags of lightning I’ve ever seen lit up that northern sky (not close, not nearly far enough away), and I took that as my sign to hit the road, which was still a bit of a hike down to the right. As I headed down the hill, so did the ponies I’d been visiting with. No fools, they (or me!).
This pic, taken Sunday from between the main/original water catchment and Filly Peak in Spring Creek Basin, is looking southeast toward the Glade and Benchmark Lookout. A few days before, I’d seen the red swaths of retardant across the trees while looking at smoke up there, but I didn’t manage to get a decent pic that showed it. While fire continues to smoke in that area (that’s the Ferris Fire’s northeastern edge), clearly firefighters and aircraft pilots have been hard at work. So hugely grateful! Rick and Linda Freimuth, who staff the tower during the fire season (!!!) hope get the green light to return this week. The mustangs and I (you know they would if they could) will be cheering their return.
Now, some taken yesterday (Monday):
Storm brewing to the east. Spring Creek Basin’s western rimrocks and Filly Peak (lower left) are in sunshine, while Temple Butte, McKenna Peak, Brumley Point and the basin’s eastern ridges are shadowed by rain! Woo-the-heck-hoo!
Looking back to the west from the same spot as above. More rain! What looks like white smoke on the horizon at left IS smoke from the Ferris Fire … and I hope it got a good dose of the wet stuff. It wasn’t a high-rain-chance day, but toss the forecast and let ‘er rain!
Methinks the weather wizards were outsmarted by Ma Nature herself. 😉 RAIN, BABY, RAIN! This is from Chrome’s Point in western Spring Creek Basin, looking eastish at a curtain of rain that DID, as I was taking pix, make its way west. Unfortunately, I didn’t get tooooo wet. Ha – I would not have minded!
Ants congregating at the entrance to their mound. Apparently, “Ants congregate at their mound entrances after rain primarily to survive flooding. When underground tunnels fill with water, the colony is forced to evacuate. They move the queen, larvae, and food upward to escape the saturation, using the surface or mound entrance as a temporary, elevated sanctuary.” Interestingly, these ants and others I saw doing the same thing in the same relative area happened to be on some of the highest ground in the basin, near the western boundary. I guess that when you’re an ant, everything is at the elevation of ground level (ha ha!).
From the south wall of Spring Creek canyon looking eastish after the rain (it didn’t last very long, unfortunately).
Hope you don’t mind this view! It’s pretty spectacular. No, that’s not a road down there in the canyon; that’s Spring Creek arroyo, and just beyond (lower left), it leaves Spring Creek Basin to cross lower-ish Disappointment Valley on its way to join Disappointment Creek (neither of which are carrying water at the moment).
See the pinto pony? This is from the same point as the above two pix, looking generally northwestish across lower Disappointment Valley toward Utah’s La Sal Mountains. There’s a fence across this lower end of the canyon to keep the mustangs within Spring Creek Basin, and there’s a water gap (hanging PVC pipes to move when water DOES flow) across the Spring Creek arroyo. There are a couple of manmade structures down there, one behind McKenna and one kind of in front of him.
As it turned out, though he and his pal and a band were in the vicinity – and the reason I walked out – it was something else entirely that actually took me all the way to the canyon rim. … And that will wait for another post because I got some pix that knocked even my socks off.
To end this post, news that I never want to post because I want it to never have happened, some really tragic news from the Gold Mountain Fire near Ouray and Ridgway: A pilot was killed Sunday when his aircraft, used to aid firefighting efforts on that fire, crashed into Silver Jack Reservoir, in southwestern Gunnison County, on the northeast side of the fire. It’s the worst of all news to lose another firefighter. 😦
Note the slight rainbow at far right, looking pretty much straight southeast up-valley Disappointment. Familiar icons at far left make up Spring Creek Basin’s eastern horizon.
If it looks wet, it was. Give or take (thanks for the *give*, Mz Nature!), Disappointment Valley got half an inch of rain. The great thing was that it kept coming. … The sunshine would break through … then another wave of rain would pass through … then the sunshine would break through … then another wave would pass through.
Much needed; much gratitude!
We got rain. 🙂
Later, as the sky was clearing, while waves of rain were still pushing across Disappointment Valley, the magic appeared:
The wide, wide, super-wide views. Even with my phone, I had to go wiiiiiide to get the entire rainbow – and its double – in view.
My unicorn (otherwise known as Winona). 🙂
Yesterday might have been April Fools’ Day, but the magic was real! SO incredibly thankful for the rain (very light but most of the day … and after dark again). The world instantly looks greener.
We got rain. 🙂 Don’t get squeamish about Friday the 13th; that was our LUCKY day in Southwest Colorado!
Valentine’s Day morning: Clouds clearing from the peak of McKenna and the upper butte of Temple. The snow on the left/north-facing side of McKenna Peak is fresh (and no longer there after the clouds cleared to reveal a completely clear Colorado sky).
Warm, damp ground + moisture = rising steam and lingering cloud banks. In laywoman’s terms: gorgeous.
A few miles of zooming and a hike of a couple of miles and a different part of the basin later: Seneca and her band greeted me. That’s Brumley Point behind her; McKenna Peak and Temple Butte are just to the left. They were still holding *some* clouds, but you can see the sunshine is already defeating the clouds handily.
More moisture coming this coming week? Everything is crossed, and hopes are high for even a little bit more rain or – super hopefully – some snow.
… we dance! 🙂
It’s been a crazy few days, and I’m almost over the rivers and past the mountains and down the plains and into the woods of home for Thanksgiving week.
I hope you all have joy wherever you are!
We got more rain Thursday. 🙂
Buckeye and his band knew exactly where to find relatively fresh water trickling down this rock arroyo, where it fills pools and puddles and tinajas along the way. I LOVE seeing the horses find new water. It doesn’t last long, but the fact that it’s there is, really, just cool.
The perspective is weird, but this is looking DOWN the rock arroyo. The bright part is the reflection of clouds in the water of a tinaja in the rock.
This looks like a bigger scene than it actually is. It’s actually only a couple of feet from the little “waterfall” – which is only maybe 6 or 8 inches tall? – to where I’m holding my phone along the little rock wall on the left. Is it cool or what?! (It looked a lot cooler in reality; it loses something in translation to still image.)
This twin-trunk cottonwood is downstream from the rock arroyo. I wonder how far under the soil surface is that bedrock? Not far downstream is another cottonwood, still very green-leaved!
It doesn’t look it, but all that ground is very nicely damp to downright muddy.
Another gorgeous post-rain day in Spring Creek Basin. 🙂
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 