Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

At least one part of Disappointment Valley got 1.35 inches of rain over about 16 hours yesterday (it started around dark Friday and ended mid-morning Saturday). Every minor ditch and arroyo to every creek bed (Disappointment, Spring and Dawson creeks) ran with water. … LOTS of water. None had been running previously; all had been dry.

While a lot of water ran off and away, there must have been a fair bit of soaking in; the rain was all fairly light and decidedly steady. The ground and the road into and in Spring Creek Basin are all SOGGY.

Come along on this virtual tour with me – yesterday late afternoon – to see what I saw:

It’s hard to tell either how wide or how deep the water is here in Disappointment Creek several miles up-valley from the turn to Spring Creek Basin off Disappointment Road, but given that it was previously dry, I *hope* you can see that it’s running like a milk-chocolate river. This is looking upstream.

Another view, from several miles downstream of the above image; this is just 50 or 75 yards south of the road to Spring Creek Basin. The creek channel is much narrower here; I hope you can tell how high and wide the water is?

Now we’re looking upstream at Spring Creek water flowing downstream (toward us) from Spring Creek Basin, a few miles east (Temple Butte is visible against the horizon). (I’m still on Disappointment Road, a mile or so north of the above Disappointment Creek pic.)

And, from the other side of the bridge, Spring Creek flowing downstream toward its confluence with Disappointment Creek (marked by the line of barely visible golden cottonwoods in the middle distance).

I know it’s hard to tell width and depth again; the creek arroyo here isn’t terribly deep, but it’s three or four times as wide at this point as in the second pic of Disappointment Creek above. These creeks carried a LOT of water yesterday.

Then I went looking for the condition of the Spring Creek arroyo in Spring Creek Basin (in case this isn’t obvious, Spring Creek and its tributary arroyos drain Spring Creek Basin – when it rains – and the main Spring Creek arroyo carries all that gathered water west across Disappointment Valley to join the also-muddy water of Disappointment Creek, and together, they carry the watershed’s drainage to the Dolores River).

I thought you all might like to see a bit different view of Spring Creek, and I had to walk the last half-mile or so because the road was still too mucky even for my faithful little buggy, so this is just upstream and around the curve from the first crossing, where I usually take pix of rolling Spring Creek after a good rain. If you’ve ever gone into the basin with me, you’ve heard the story about Custer dam (and I even wrote a bit about it earlier this year). This image doesn’t show it well because of the background, but if you look on the left and right sides of the image above the water, you might see that the ground is abnormally straight/flat? Those sides are what remain of Custer dam (marked on maps). The brief story is that around 1900 (?), someone(s) put an enormous amount of work (and likely money) into building a dam to contain water from Spring Creek (the lowest/central arroyo in Spring Creek Basin) and the north and south *major* arroyos that feed into it (and a whole lotta other arroyos feed into all of them). The people also built at least a few miles of irrigation ditch. The story goes that the first major storm after the dam was built burst the dam. As you can (maybe?) see in the pic above, Mother Nature prevailed. (Who could possibly think this country is farmable?!)

Now I’m standing atop the south side of the dam looking downstream and westish. Just around the bend to the right is where the road crosses (when the arroyo is dry). It’s a weird perspective, and though I thought this would be a great perspective, it proved difficult to actually show. The road tops the area at the far (north) end of the dam, which is more to the right than “straight” across, but it’s only … 150 yards away, maybe? Or maybe it’s that from the far side part of the dam.

Now I’m down at the bend that you can see in the above pic, still looking downstream at the road crossing. You see it, right? Where all the rocks are at the left side of the pic. The road crosses the rocks, the arroyo and up the other side to the right.

Sorry, how about now? 🙂 Straight across. This should look familiar. … Well, except for the increase in rocks and the far side, which looks a bit like a wall. …

Looking upstream, there’s the curve where I was standing a couple of pix ago, looking to where I’m now standing.

The water, I should mention, had greatly receded at this point. This is probably some five, six miles (??) upstream from the first Spring Creek pix I showed toward the top of this post. I found evidence that the water reached probably at least another 20 yards up the road where I approached, from, say, the middle of the arroyo. It would have looked most definitely like Spring RIVER at its highest/deepest point. Spring Creek runs ONLY when we have a major rain event. … And when all that water from all that rain is done, so is the “creek.”

I’m gonna need my shovel. Again. 🙂

Are you tired? We’ve been walking around, in the super-mucky mud, in calf-high mud (or muck) boots. And we still have to hoof it back to the buggy. I was whupped.

But you can never, ever, ever beat that view. 🙂 Especially rain-dampened and -darkened. 🙂

I can’t wait to get farther in and take a gander at ponds. SURELY the mustangs have multiple water sources now. What an amazing deluge of rain. Much needed.