The day after our full day of rain, we had some blue back in our sky. In other directions, the smoke was only too noticeable (it wasn’t missable, unfortunately), but coppery red Gaia against the blue sky with Temple Butte in the background is – smooch! – perfection!
This particular day wasn’t as smoky as some others have been, but in lieu of rain clouds, we’ve been missing our clear Colorado skies. Reya makes up for the distant dinge with her lovely mustang self as she hoofs it back toward her band as another band approaches.
Most of the green in this image is greasewood and four-wing saltbush; both types of vegetation provide valuable browse for the mustangs.
As of this post, we’ve had some really lovely rain again, so hopefully our blue, smoke-free skies aren’t far away!
In remote Disappointment Valley, partnerships not only are valuable, they can be life-saving.
Our Spring Creek Basin mustangs got a boost in the water department from three different “departments” of wildfire-fighting crews recently. They had water left over from fighting a small fire (thank you!), and they very graciously offered the remaining water in two engines to the horses, pumping about 900 gallons of water onto one of the aprons at the main catchment.
On behalf of our mustangs, thank you VERY MUCH for your firefighting and for the gift of water for our mustangs!
From Cortez Fire Protection District: Matt and Brad.
From the Angelina, Sabine and Davy Crockett national forests and National Forests and Grasslands in Texas: Paul, Aurora, Danny, James and Jonesy – and Tracy (sp?), who’s working here as a dispatcher. They’re “on loan” to the Forest Service here in Colorado (Dolores Public Lands Office), replacing the previous crew (hi also to Matt, David and Marie!). Their connection is a firefighter named Bear, who came with a small crew to tackle a small fire I reported a few years ago. Bear now is serving in Texas with the U.S. Forest Service. Small world!
From the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control: Chris, Jim and Cory.
Big shout out to all of these fine men and women who work long hours in back-of-beyond places. … I bet they don’t often get to see (and help!) wild horses while out on assignment! Thank you, thank you, thank you … from all of us who love the mustangs!
Allow me to draw your attention away from the gorgeous mustang (the lovely Temple) and from the gorgeous background (McKenna Peak, Temple Butte, Knife Edge, Valentine Mesa … Spring Creek Basin) … and focus it on the green, green blades of galleta grass at the heart of it all.
Courtesy of Mother Nature and her monsoon rains of 2021. 🙂
Hollywood.
Handsome.
Really. What else is there to be said? 🙂
Temple grazes below her namesake Temple Butte as rain moves in from the southeast.
Rain! It was accompanied by lightning inside the boundaries of the basin. At this point, I hightailed it outta there!
Just to share space with the wild ones, any time, is a wonderful gift. When the sky looks like that, even in the distance, when rain has fallen and is predicted to fall again, that’s like birthday and Christmas. The very best gifts.
Do you suppose we’ll get to phase 5 soon!? … I think so. 🙂 Close. We’re SO close!
Those wily BLM’ers – Mike Jensen and new dad Daniel Chavez – hustled out to the basin without alert or fanfare last week and finished attaching the rest of the propanel sheets to the roof structure.
The last time I’d seen it, when Garth Nelson and Jim Cisco were out to attach the gutter and install three of four pipes, the roof covered half the structure. Because of rain in our forecast, they wanted to get the gutter installed so we could start catching SOME water.
Sure is shady under there! And think of that whole span of rain-catching marvelousness!
Just the end tank has to be piped, then the trough installed (the pipe to its destination is already in the ground) and the structure fenced to keep curious ponies from rubbing on tanks and posts and pawing at lids.
And what the heck is this, you ask?! It might be the strangest, most mind-bending pic I’ve ever posted on this blog. That’s a reflection – in WATER – of me gripping tightly my cellphone at the open lid on TOP of one of the water tanks. See it now? Even standing on the valve cover, I couldn’t quite see into the dark depths. Although I turned on the “flashlight” of my phone, I’m not sure it worked very well; you can see what you *can* see only by virtue of a little Photoshope lightening of shadows. But when I looked at my phone, I knew by the “white dot” – the reflection – that there was water TO reflect my phone and the lid and the metal roof above: I knew there was WATER. 🙂
Wow, wowza and zowie Marie. 🙂 That itself was worth a little dance (and it’s a good thing no ponies or humans were around to witness!).
And YES! We got our biggest rain to date later that evening. Perfect timing, guys. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sooner than I thought it would happen, Garth Nelson emailed me early in the morning last week and said he and Jim Cisco were coming out to install the gutter across the front of the catchment structure!
They beat me to the basin, and this was happening when I got there!
The propanel roof sheets are just halfway across, but with rain in this past week’s forecast – for later in the week at the time – Garth decided that it was a priority to get the gutter in place.
The ends of the pipes supporting the whole structure had to be cut a bit to make room for the gutter pieces, which were built/formed/constructed by a local business in Cortez. The guys did NOT bring that cool battery-powered band saw with which they were all completely in love, so Jim (pictured) and Garth had to make do with the ol’ sawzall. It worked; it just took longer (and went through a few blades).
Level says perfect!
Garth put a couple of beads of caulk between each new section of gutter.
Jim and Garth drilled holes at intervals in order to then run long screws to attach the gutters to the steel purlins.
And these little metal cylinders (held by Garth) acted as spacers to keep the gutters a uniform width.
They had to cut the ends of each of the steel pipes (four) to enable the gutter to be flush to the purlins.
And then with their great and amazing strength, they were able to break off the ends. 🙂
In no time (it seemed to me), they were down (up!) to the last gutter piece!
When the gutter pieces were attached all along the front of the catchment, it was time to install the pipes from the gutter to the tanks. Holes had to be drilled above each tank to put the pieces in the gutter to attach the pipes.
A little vertical …
… and a little horizontal! (These pieces actually slope a bit. :))
And it looked like this! These are the first two tanks, piped. Jim is tightening the fitting in the bottom of the gutter.
Here are three of the four tanks piped, and you can see the valve-culvert lids in place.
Then … things got really exciting. Jim drove out to the basin in his weed-spraying rig, which has the 200-gallon water tank on it. When the gutter was in place and the pipes were installed, he pulled up alongside the eastern end of the structure and started pumping water up to the top of the roof.
And this happened:
And you know what I did: I bawled like a happy baby. 🙂
Garth marked a few places that were leaking, to be recaulked.
Overall, it worked well, and I WISH that I could attach a recording of the SOUND of water trickling through the pipes and swirling into the tanks.
This all happened Monday, and early, early Wednesday morning, it rained. Again Wednesday night, it rained. 🙂
Now, we just have to finish the installation of the propanel sheets across the rest of the roof, pipe the fourth tank and install the trough (I think). Our very big project is very nearly complete!
With this post, the blog and reality are caught up and meshed!
The guys showed up with the flatbed full of purlins – the last purlins required to weld to the roof structure on which to screw down the propanel sheets – and backed it right into the last section.
It was hot. Already. But they still had welding to do, which meant leather and Nomex and helmets for safety. Which meant – did I mention already? – hot.
Bonus: Backing the flatbed in under the structure meant that the purlins were close to where the guys hefted them into place on the steel pipes, and I had a higher vantage from which to take documentary photos. 🙂 AND – on which to help hold the purlins steady (with my great and amazing strength!) while the guys welded them into place on either end. I’m tall, but I found it helpful to use one of the readily available rocks around to stand on for a couple extra inches to hold each of the purlins. The flatbed gave me a couple of extra FEET.
WIN!
You’ve seen the guys weld in multiple previous posts, so with this pic, fast forward a bit: All the purlins are welded in place across the whole roof structure! … So what the heck are those BLM’ers doing now?!
The last/top purlin is to Garth’s right. The pipe Daniel’s working on is the west-end pipe of the roof structure. (Note: There’s currently a fair amount of “extra,” which means that we can add purlins and propanel in the future for an even bigger roof surface.) Whatever they’re doing, it has the undivided attention of all three of us!
Our guys are craftsmen, and they’re rightly proud of their work. So Daniel “signed” it in beads of weld. 🙂 That’s Garth in the pic, “chipping” the welds flat.
And he put the year on it, too. Forget the trials of 2020; 2021 is the year we’ll remember as the origin of the basin’s third water catchment for the mustangs.
We’ve thrown around a couple of name ideas for this particular catchment. It’s in the eastern end of wildcat valley (my name), beyond what we call wildcat spring. Wildcat catchment? With the new shade from the propanel, we were able to eat lunch right there – instead of up the hill under a tree. The whole structure is kind of a box. Lunchbox catchment? But I think we might have a winner here: BLM’ers marching, leading lines across the foreground … Abbey Road catchment, anyone? 🙂 (Hey, we do like to laugh!)
Daniel got to work with the zz-zz.
And Garth got to work with the zz-zz.
Now I want to take you on a bit of a walk around the project, so you can see it from multiple directions.
This is basically at the southwestern corner looking northeastish.
Looking a bit more eastish. The road is just to my left.
Here, the road is just below me (you can see it at lower left … and as it continues on around the loop right in the center of the pic), and we’re looking southeastish toward McKenna Peak and Temple Butte.
An even bigger view … from near our previous lunch spot. 🙂
And this is looking back to the southish (ever so slightly southwestish). That’s Filly Peak in the background, and if you know where to look, you can see the top of the tank at the main, original water catchment in Spring Creek Basin. 🙂
Did I mention that it was hot? There might be some clouds over the horizons in these pix, but that didn’t mean any of those clouds were over our heads, over the basin. Hopefully, Mother Nature will take some pity on us before the next work day.
With that, we’re all caught up, and the blog reflects reality. Next steps: Finishing the propanel across the rest of the roof structure and installing the gutter across the front and the pipes from it to the tanks!
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 