Beautiful Alegre, showing off her chic braid again in all the wide ocean of snow.
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I want to be clear that Spring Creek Basin – indeed, Disappointment Valley – no longer looks like this, covered in a few to several inches of snow. 🙂 We’re back to brown, but it’s that kind of *wet* brown that’s perfectly good (if hard to drive through).
Odin and Piedra browse while Kestrel looks back at a following bachelor (I didn’t know it when I took this pic, but there was another band farther away and out of sight over a hill; they showed up later).
This pic (and for at least a few days to come, though our snow is melting *rapidly* as I type this Friday) was taken the day after the big snowfall. I was amazed that there was still so much snow covering the ground and shadscale and sage and four-wing saltbush and snake weed and grasses!
Muddy, muddy, muddy underneath the snow. North-facing sides of arroyos were still snow-covered; south-facing sides were muddy ski slopes (vertical or almost nearly so)! Good luck getting up the sides unless you had a bit of an erosion channel to use as steps or enough snow to jam a foot in sideways – and get it to hold just long enough to step up with your other foot!
Fabulous, wonderful moisture. I hope this is a sign of a good winter to come.
* The snow wasn’t actually very fluffy; it was really rather wet. But the alliteration worked for the post title. 🙂
Seneca … so gorgeous in evening hues of light and bronze.
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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.
Handsome Buckeye in a sea of autumn grasses.
Big baby Bia grazes with mama Aiyanna. Big “baby” girl isn’t so little anymore!
Caughtcha lookin’. 🙂
Not much bothers Kestrel, but she does like to keep her eyes on the goings-on around her family. I like to keep my eyes on HER because sometimes she’ll give me a great, direct look!
It’s hard to choose a *bad* place to nap in Spring Creek Basin. I had about 2.5 minutes with them after I walked out with that lovely last bit of light … and then night’s shadow overtook our part of the world.
What a gorgeous 2.5 minutes. 🙂
Temple and Madison. Gorgeous girls. Besties. Wild and free mustang mares.
A closeup view of Flash, a bit battered but never to be counted out. 🙂
Mariah whinnies to a band she can see a pretty fair distance away. I’m not sure who she was communicating with – or trying to – but it elicited a couple of answering (sympathetic?) whinnies from a couple of her band mates.
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Update: It is raining like crazy over Disappointment Valley and the entire region (all of the Western Slope, according to the radar, which very often lies, but I think is pretty accurate right now!). This is only a guess currently (9 a.m.), but I’m sure all those little and big arroyos are running, I’m sure Spring Creek is running again, I’m sure Disappointment Creek is running! I’m sure ponds are filling (whether from dry depressions or semi-full already), and I’m equally sure this is fantastic for all the water catchments in the basin.
Yay for late-season RAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 