Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area may be small (slightly less than 22,000 acres), but it sure feels like big country.
Big rugged
22 01 2025Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
Buckeye’s home advantage
20 01 2025
No one could really call me a sports fan (Gig ’em, Aggies!), and certainly this blog about Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs isn’t the place you would think to read about the collegiate football national championship game.
But the Ohio State Buckeyes are playing Notre Dame (what are they? The Fighting Irish?), and my folks not only are from Ohio, my dad is an Ohio State Buckeye. 🙂
Have you wondered why Buckeye is named Buckeye? It’s not because he was born buckskin (though that would have been a good guess). It’s because he was born a couple of days before my mom’s birthday, and she named him when he was a baby!
So we’ll be rooting for the Buckeyes – of course! Go, Buckeyes!
Also celebrated today: the life of Martin Luther King Jr. According to Brittanica, “The day commemorates the life and work of Dr. King, who was a Baptist minister and prominent leader in the American civil rights movement. People are encouraged to use the day to ‘reflect on the principles of racial equality and nonviolent social change espoused by Dr. King.’”
Be kind to each other, and remember, we’re all on this planet together.
And for the incoming president, a hope from the last lines of Irish poet John O’Donahue’s poem, “For One Who Holds Power,” which I read recently:
“May integrity of soul be your first ideal.
The source that will guide and bless your work.“
(In polar news: Yesterday’s high temp in Disappointment Valley was about 28F. Not frigid, but it definitely was not warm. Buckeye and his family were able to find liquid water in the hoofprints through the ice layer in the bottom of the Spring Creek arroyo, so with that and their winter grazing, they’re not too bothered by the polar vortex.)
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
Arrival of the front
19 01 2025
The cold front announced its arrival in Disappointment Valley yesterday morning with wind and dramatic skies. Utah’s La Sal Mountains were blocked from sight by a snow squall in/over western Disappointment Valley most of the afternoon.
I drove into Spring Creek Basin briefly, just in time to see a little snow squall rolling from north to south across the eastern ridges of the basin. In contrast to the other day, when the snow blazed a trail across the basin, yesterday, the snow was all around but never atop us.
Horses were visible in the distance, but I decided that this would be more of a scenery day.
On my way out of the basin, I happened upon the group of about 15 pronghorns that have been hanging around together lately. By the time I saw them, stopped, got the camera out of my pack and aimed, at least half of them had dropped off their little ridge.
Away out yonder in those breaks and canyons is the Dolores River.
From back on the Disappointment Road, another isolated little squall was dropping snow along Horse Park, a narrow little valley between Spring Creek Basin and beyond. You can recognize part of the far ridge as the same one in the background of the Maiku pic a couple of posts ago. The rimrocks at the bottom, semi-foreground are the western boundary of Spring Creek Basin.
And just a little south of the previous pic, the squall was still moving south over Temple Butte. In the near foreground are cottonwoods and tamarisk along Disappointment Creek.
This is yet farther south (from my vantage point, I’m looking sort of southeast-ish). While I was trying to get the snow over the very far (and much higher elevation) ridges, a golden eagle was flying over the scene. See it above the cottonwood at left?
We’ll close with another, tighter view across Disappointment Creek and Spring Creek Basin. You can see the basin’s western rimrocks, Flat Top, Round Top, submarine ridge, McKenna Peak and Temple Butte – snow beyond.
Gosh, I love this place. 🙂
Wherever you are, I hope you’re warm these next few days!
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : Disappointment Creek, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Pronghorn, Snow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte
All Flash, not much snow
12 01 2025
When a wild pony poses, you generally have about 2.7 seconds to either take the shot or get into position to take the shot … or you don’t get the shot because wild ponies don’t generally hang about posing for paparazzi.
Flash did me a super solid and posed for probably at least 12.8 seconds before he moseyed on after his mares.
Plenty ‘o time. 🙂
That’s snow in the background, swirling and whirling with the wind between us and McKenna Peak and Temple Butte. It snowed in the morning, too, but other than the far eastern ridges of Spring Creek Basin, it left nothing behind. … And by the time I took this pic in the evening, most of what had stuck to those ridges was gone again.
Keep trying, Mother Nature. We need that moisture badly (and that makes me think of the terrible wildfires in California, where I read they’ve had just 0.16 inch of moisture since May … ouch. THAT is just astoundingly dry). Keep trying, Mother Nature. …
Comments : 8 Comments »
Categories : Knife Edge, McKenna Peak, Snow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
The best of winter brown
5 01 2025
Tenaz was napping on semi-alert about halfway between his band and the following band, and I took full advantage of the handsome background beyond his handsome self. 🙂
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
Winter whites needed
3 01 2025
Mariah, again. Napping, again.
She does pick the most beautiful nap spots, eh?
We need a bit of winter white to match her fuzzy coat, or we’re going to be looking that brown when we don’t want to be looking that brown – and way too hot to boot – later in the year. We don’t have any moisture in the forecast … hopefully that will change sooner than later!
(That white on the shady side of McKenna Peak IS residual snow, not melting on the north-facing, shady side of the peak. But we still need a lot more, covering a lot more ground.)
Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
On the second, from the first
2 01 2025
I was just thinking the other day that sweet Madison hadn’t featured on a blog post recently, which is really a travesty because she’s soooo pretty. And here she is!
The horses were mostly on or along one of the roads in the basin, so I dropped below the road to get McKenna Peak and Temple Butte looming large in the background.
They were semi-browsing, semi-napping and not in any hurry to get anywhere in particular. Kinda summed up the first day of the year perfectly. 🙂
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy
21 12 2024
Chipeta, looking very fuzzy and wonderfully wuzzy a couple of weeks ago when the ridges still had snow.
Dear Santa: We’d like some snow for Christmas. Thank you very much! 🙂
Happy winter solstice, folks!
Comments : 8 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
Lovely ladies
17 12 2024
Juniper walked down this ridge and then stopped to pose beneath Temple Butte, named for one of our original amazing advocates, Pati Temple. Lovely ladies, both.
Comments : 5 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
Can’t-be-contained bonus
27 11 2024When I was a young Coloradan, newly moved to Durango from Texas, my then-co-workers at The Durango Herald can attest to the fact that the first time snow fell that winter, I went a little bonkers with excitement.
Not much has changed, 22-plus years later. 🙂
We had another great (rain to) snowfall overnight, and it was a wonderland of white this morning – and muddymuddymuddy underneath. The snow is nearly all melted – at least down-valley – now, but rather than wait for tomorrow, here’s a peek at the Thanksgiving-Eve bounty in Spring Creek Basin:
Shortly after sunrise, Chrome’s Point, looking south-southeastish. Flat Top and Round Top are at left in the distance, and Filly Peak is at right.
Looking back north-northwestish, the difference in light is dramatic (this was maybe only 10-15 minutes after the first pic?) as the clouds linger at the higher elevations south and east of Spring Creek Basin and have started clearing to the west and north (though the mountains were engulfed in clouds the whole time I was out).
Holy heavenly light. If I’d been able to see that spotlight of light, with my own eyeballs, at the time, I would have brought out the big gun (these are all from my phone – handy little pocket cam that it is). Wow. Knife Edge is ahead to the left; Brumley Point is visible at far right. Temple Butte and McKenna Peak are still completely within the clouds.
Round Top – aka Saucer (as in flying) Hill – with snow still pouring from the moisture-laden clouds to the southern ridges of Disappointment Valley and beyond to the Glade.
I was just below the base of Knife Edge with mustangs when Temple Butte and McKenna Peak were starting to emerge from the still-billowing clouds. Dramatic much?!?
Heading back to my buggy and the road, looking upstream at the Spring Creek arroyo toward its source at McKenna Peak … Temple Butte behind it … submarine ridge to the right … Brumley Point straight ahead (it sits right on the basin’s southeast boundary) … Round Top at far right. Water WAS trickling through the bed of the arroyo in some places (like where I crossed).
From the ridge at the main/original water catchment (oh, how I hope this snow provided lots and lots of water for our catchments!), looking eastish across the basin. I mean … who DOESN’T get giddy at the sight of snow?! 🙂 Knife Edge is the ridge at far left with the top rim just barely free of snow. See the trees at the base of the ridge at almost farthest left? That’s where the ponies are (the ones I visited, anyway).
This one’s a little out of order, but it sums it all up. 🙂 I love mustangs; I love snow; I love Spring Creek Basin and its mustangs in the snow!
That’s our water. Our moisture. Our lifeblood for growing things.
So, so, so, SOOOOO grateful this Thanksgiving Eve. Happy gratitude to all you wonderful readers and your families on this, my very favorite holiday. Hope you all get to spend it with those you love, in places you love. 🙂
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : Brumley Point, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Mustangs, Snow, Spring Creek, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Spring Creek canyon, Temple Butte, The Glade, Water
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 