Tres Rios Field Office | Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Up and coming

9 10 2026

If these kids are representative of the country’s young folks, we’re all gonna be OK. 🙂

Earlier this week, Disappointment Valley and Spring Creek Basin – and one mustang band! – played host to a group of eighth-graders from Boulder’s Watershed School and three of their teachers. They got to see Buckeye’s band after a long drive from Meeker, where they’d camped after a great visit to the Wild Horse Refuge near Craig. Then they camped above Disappointment Creek, just outside Spring Creek Basin. In the morning, BLM range specialist and herd manager Anton Rambur and range tech Laura Heaton arrived to lead the students in a vegetation-monitoring project up the same hill. Tres Rios Field Office Manager Derek Padilla also came out to see and talk to the kids about the variety of land management that happens throughout BLM public lands in Southwest Colorado.

The kids spread out in small groups and pairs to conduct their utilization (grazed/ungrazed bits of galleta (a native, warm-season grass that’s growing after the recent rains) along lines of five steps at a time) under the watchful eye of Buckeye and the band.

And then, while they listened to Laura and Anton guide them about how to fill out their sheets with the information they’d gathered, Buckeye decided that he and the band were ready for their morning drink … which meant ambling up the trail … and giving the kids a good check-over … before heading down the other side of the hill to the water catchment.

Top THAT, any other school trip ever, anywhere! 🙂

We stayed up top to listen to Derek and give the horses a chance to get down the hill, to the catchment to drink the lovely fresh rainwater in the trough … and they came up a different trail back to the top of the hill, checked us out again and returned to grazing.

Oh, my lovely, wonderful, awesome and amazing mustangs. 🙂 You do me SO proud!

Then back down to the corrals and buses, where Anton and Laura helped them do the math involved in figuring out how much the horses are grazing in that area of the basin. At the end, I heard numbers ranging anywhere from 7 percent to 50 percent use/grazed plants, so even in our drought, we’re in good shape for the horses not eating everything in their paths. And the students learned a little bit about what BLM folks are looking at to manage the rangelands that support wild horses – and other grazing/browsing wildlife like elk, deer and pronghorns.

I got to talk more about PZP and show off my darting rifle and let some of the kids see how light it is and how quiet (no darts involved!). And I marveled the whole time at the insightful, curious questions the kids asked and the answers Anton and Laura gave to provide the kids with a well-rounded picture of what it takes to manage a herd of wild horses on public land in Colorado.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-mazing!

Here follow a load of pix of Watershed School students and teachers Amy, Diana and Pete, BLM’ers Laura, Anton and Derek … and the mustangs they got to see:

Laura points out characteristics of grasses to students. We saw past-prime cheat grass, and they concentrated on newly growing galleta. (We also saw Indian ricegrass, grama grass, alkali sacaton and/or sand dropseed (my hat is off to you if you can look at the latter two and tell them apart!)

Students examine a clump of grass that shows last year’s growth as well as recent growth.

Laura and Anton talk about how to measure clumps of grass. The idea was that the students walked five steps in a line, measured galleta at their toe or within reach … then another five steps … until they’d measured 10 samples. Teacher Amy is in the foreground (this is the second time she has brought one of her eighth-grade humanities classes to Spring Creek Basin; the last time, it poured rain! as you can see in these pix, they lucked out with spectacular October weather), and teacher Pete is in the brown hoodie and camp. … Start to notice the “little white dots” in the distance.

Teacher Diana is at right while the students watch Laura measure the grass clump. For a little perspective, I’m facing nearly directly north toward the main, west-ish part of Spring Creek Basin.

No mistaking that horizon. 🙂 Laura helps one of the small groups of students with their monitoring while two other groups walk their lines in the background.

Boys walk their line with the basin’s south-facing rimrocks in the near distance and Utah’s La Sal Mountains in the far distance.

It’s hard to get a whole lot farther from Boulder than Disappointment Valley (OK, we’re not the *farthest* southwest corner of the state), but students were focused on the vegetation and their project. How cool is it that they’re able to take trips like this instead of learning from books only, only in a classroom?

Another pair walking their line with other groups in the distance. See that GREEN grass? Yeah, thank you, RAIN! A little goes a long way in this high desert.

Diana follows the boys back up the hill after they finished their line. Can’t get enough of that scenery.

All gathered again to ensure they’d filled out their sheets well. … There was math to come!

These city students were not afraid to drop to the ground among the grasses and shadscale and four-wing saltbush – and cacti!

Laura, left, and teachers Amy and Diana helped the kids with their utilization sheets (these are the same that BLM employees use while out monitoring rangelands). They’re a little hard to see (wide-angle lens, not my big gun), but look straight out over the kids’ heads. …

We were being watched!

Just like the evening before, Buckeye’s band was over the top of this hill, down toward the north. Here, they’re a little east of where they’d been previously. The previous evening, after they arrived, I hiked the kids out to the trees – there’s a little arroyo that starts there – and we picked up the trail to the west, which we took a bit farther left of where the horses are seen here.

I’m not sure how long we’d been on the hill, but we weren’t in a hurry, and the students were absorbed in their project. While they worked, I took pix and kept an eye on Buckeye’s band to gauge their comfort level (they were at least a few hundred yards away from us). By about this time, as the students were nearing the completion of the monitoring part of their project, I started to notice that the full band was appearing, and Buckeye was inching a bit closer. … And then it hit me: They want to make a trip up and over the hill and down to the catchment trough for their morning drink. Sure enough, they walked on up the trail, but where I thought they’d veer off more to the west and go down the trail I brought the kids up the evening before, those curious ponies came right up the trail to where the students were gathered! I cautioned everybody to just sit tight and stay fairly quiet and let the horses explore this mass of humanity on their usual empty route to water.

And the gathered group of students and adults got the mustang sighting of their lives. 🙂

Pretty amazing, eh? 🙂

While we were watching Buckeye’s band watching US, Tres Rios Field Office Manager Derek Padilla hiked up the hill to join us. He talked to the students about the variety of jobs available with the Bureau of Land Management (and U.S. Forest Service, where he spent the first 27 years of his 30-year land-management career) and the variety of ways BLM’ers manage the multiples uses that happen on public lands.

He and Buckeye might have worked it out between themselves because the band had plenty of time to head down the hill to water, drink and then return up a different trail.

After one last farewell to the ponies, the group returned down the hill to the buses to complete the math (!) part of the project and have some lunch and a last round of questions and answers with Laura and Anton.

Yes, math does have real-world applications. 🙂 Laura and Anton helped students with the formulas to calculate the results of their utilization (grazed/ungrazed) survey. Results: The horses have plenty of forage, even after our stressful droughty summer. Whew.

Before they left, at least one of the teachers and a few of the students got to check out my darting rifle. It’s very lightweight, and it fires off of a CO2 cartridge (pressurized to the distance of a mare). NOTE: NO DARTS WERE IN THE RIFLE. I let them put some air in the rifle and pull the trigger to hear the sound and have the feel of it. A surprise to a couple: No kick. 🙂

Kudos to these kids and their teachers for thinking outside the box and creating the experiential learning experiences Watershed School is known for. *I* sure never got to visit wild horses as part of any class trip, and I attended lots of schools in many states and Germany! They are super curious and intelligent and asked some of the best questions I’d ever heard – and I get a LOT of questions and have a lot of answers. Speaking for myself (I’m sure Laura and Anton and Derek would agree): We had a blast introducing these young folks to Disappointment Valley, Spring Creek Basin and (at least a few of) our amazing mustangs. 🙂

You’re welcome back any time!

Thank you so much to these Watershed School teachers and students, and to Anton, Laura and Derek, and (I have to say it) to my boy Buckeye and his girls, for making this a fantastic visit and learning experience in Spring Creek Basin!

Comments : 15 Comments »

Categories : Advocacy, BLM, Brumley Point, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Education, Fertility control, Filly Peak, Kids & Horses, La Sal Mountains, McKenna Peak, Mustangs, Partnership, PZP, Rimrocks, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte, Tres Rios Field Office, Water catchment, Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, Work projects

Tarantula crossing

2 10 2026

‘Tis the season for tarantulas to look for mates, and this little fellow (they’re the ones who do the looking) was crossing Disappointment Road recently on just such a mission.

I stopped for a hopeful introduction (not like THAT!), but he was singleminded in his search, and clearly, my giant blue and yellow-leather glove did not at all look like what he was looking for. 🙂

According to the Google machine:

Every fall, thousands of male Oklahoma brown tarantulas wander across southeastern Colorado to search for mates.

What is Happening

Not a Migration: People call it a migration, but it is actually a mating trek.
Only Males Walk: Mature male tarantulas (ages 8 to 10) leave their underground burrows for the first and only time in their lives to find females.
Staying Put: Female tarantulas stay safely inside their permanent burrows and rarely come out.

When and Where to Watch

Timing: Peak activity happens from mid-September through October.
Best Hour: The hour just before sunset is the best time to spot them as temperatures drop.
Location: Look around the Comanche National Grassland near La Junta, especially along Highways 109, 10, and 350.

Safety and Facts

Harmless to Humans: Their venom is weak and feels like a simple bee sting. They only bite if physically grabbed.
Main Hazard: The biggest danger to the spiders is vehicle traffic on rural roads.

*****

I’m glad I didn’t call it a migration! They’re on a *mating trek*. 🙂

I even searched for “Southwest Colorado” tarantulas and got almost the same info as above with this addition: “often called Colorado browns.” And this disclaimer (?): “Tarantula mating season happens every fall in southeastern Colorado (near La Junta and the Comanche National Grassland), rather than in the southwest part of the state.” Um. With all due respect, monsieur Google, they ARE doing the same thing over here, and they do it every year.

It’s a *thing*, and I look forward to seeing the little guys. And while I watch carefully for them on the gravel and paved roads, it’s not always easy to avoid the poor critters. Wherever they are, watch for them and wish them well and lucky in love!

Actually, curious about how long that “luck” extends after mating, I put my musings to Google (aware that it’s already let me down by (as so many do) ignoring Southwest Colorado):

No, female tarantulas do not automatically kill the males after mating, though it absolutely can happen. The idea that a female always eats her mate is a common myth that is often exaggerated.

Whether a male survives depends on a mix of survival mechanics, biology, and timing:

The Mechanics of Survival

During mating, male tarantulas are fully aware of the danger. They have evolved physical adaptations specifically designed to keep them alive:

Tibial hooks: When a male approaches a female, he uses specialized hooks on his front legs to catch and pin back the female’s fangs.
The quick getaway: This hook system locks the female in place just long enough for the male to transfer his sperm. The moment he finishes, he releases her and runs away as fast as possible before she can react.

Why a Female Might Attack

If the male isn’t fast enough, or if the female is highly aggressive, sexual cannibalism does occur:

Hunger: If the female hasn’t eaten recently, she simply views the male as a highly convenient food source.
Nutritional boost: Consuming a male provides the female with a massive dose of protein and lipids. Studies show that females who eat a suitor often produce larger, healthier egg sacs.
Personality: Research has shown that a tarantula’s individual genetics dictate aggressiveness. Some aggressive females fail to distinguish between a mate and prey, attacking the male indiscriminately.

Ultimately, in the wild, many males successfully escape to find another mate. However, even if they escape the female, a male’s lifespan after reaching maturity is exceptionally short – usually less than a year –as they quickly succumb to exhaustion, predators, or the elements.

*****

I hope that gave you a bit of a chuckle while reading. I particularly appreciated that “the moment he finishes, he releases her and runs away as fast as possible before she can react”! And also, “if the female hasn’t eaten recently, she simply (simply!) views the male as a highly convenient food source”! I mean … the ladies are definitely at the top of the tarantula world, eh?!

*****

Hurricane Polo finally came through for us here in Southwest Colorado (speaking of being ignored, I watched a Denver weather woman nearly completely ignore us while talking about the rain coming into Colorado from Arizona and New Mexico via the hurricane; the closest she got was a brief mention of “the San Juans,” the mountain range east of our actual southwestern-most corner; she absolutely ignored the Western Slope and northwestern Colorado).

The soft, gentle, “female” rain as the Diné (Navajo) call it is an absolute godsend. Maybe it will still give us some growth this fall. … We can hope (we’re pretty good at hope here in the Southwest :)).

Comments : 6 Comments »

Categories : Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Tarantula, Tres Rios Field Office, Wildlife

One more year till 20/25

19 09 2026

Next year, this date – Sept. 19 – will mark 20 years since I started documenting Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs.

TWENTY. YEARS.

Sometime next fall (I don’t remember that exact date now), I’ll mark *25* years since the first time I visited Spring Creek Basin – in the rain, in a van full of people I didn’t know, and we didn’t see horses because we never actually got *into* the basin (even if it had been dry, a van might not have been the best choice of vehicle?!). I went back soon after that by myself … and, well, now it’s been 24 years *this* fall. You know that saying “blood, sweat and tears”? Yeah … it’s been ALL of that … a whole lotta alla that.

That means this fall marks my 19th (today) and 24th anniversaries. I still find that pretty shocking to say out loud.

Two thousand seven was a roundup year in Spring Creek Basin. It was the third that decade (and we still had 2011 to come). BLM said the stallion known to most as Traveler (to me as Grey) would stay. They promised. … One guy broke that promise. … One guy made it right. Grey went to Cañon City, and about a week after he had been removed, we brought him back to Southwest Colorado, where his two-week quarantine turned into three weeks (courtesy of the promise-breaker). Four weeks after he left Spring Creek Basin, David and Pati Temple returned Grey/Traveler to the basin, Pati opened the trailer door, and he returned to his wild life, where he lived until his passing a few years ago.

Photo print of Grey by Claude Steelman moments after he was released Sept. 19, 2007, into Spring Creek Basin

“He’ll never have a band again,” the BLM promise-breaker said dismissively at the time. Within a month and a half, Grey had a band again.

Grey’s Return Day was Sept. 19, 2007. After the pomp of Grey’s momentous release (a couple of other people also were there, including renowned Durango-based wildlife photographer Claude Steelman), I stayed in the basin to start documenting every mustang I found. It took three months of weekends. Nineteen wild and crazy – and now, immensely satisfying – years ago.

*Grey, toward the end of his life; we thought he was close to 30*

So today, I celebrate both the anniversary of Grey’s return and release and the day I started documenting my beloved mustangs, what has become the path of my heart through this lifetime.

My *wall of Grey*; photos of Grey by me circa 2003-2004? Gorgeous painting of Grey by talented Colorado artist Teresa Irick (@tiartcreations on Instagram) based on a photo by me

When I first started this mustang-advocacy journey, 20 years into the future felt like some random date that would never arrive. Now, wow.

I want to do something kinda fun to mark the occasion next year, and this is a head’s up. A few of you have read and commented and shared the mustangs for a lot of years now, and I’d like to send you each a photo print of the mustangs. I probably haven’t taken it yet, but I have a year (!), and I’ll let you choose. You might know who you are. 🙂 I thought I’d also ask readers – on that date, and don’t worry, I’ll remind ya’ll ahead of time – to leave a comment on that post, and I’ll put all your names in a hat and mix ’em all up, and I’ll have a mustang friend pick a name and send that person a pic, too. I want to celebrate YOU who support and love these mustangs, too! There also are a handful of people who have been with me for long years on this mustang journey, and I want to recognize them, too (more about them next year).

Hollywood and his mares, 2019; Hollywood and Houdini are both gone now … Shane, Alegre and Maia are still together

When you’re starting a thing, you never know where that thing is going to go, how it’s going to go, how long it’ll go on. When you have a burning desire to do something strong, something worthwhile, again, you just never know. That’s the future. … That’s LIFE.

So many people have had a hand (even just some fingers) in the accomplishments realized for bettering the management and preservation of Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs, and I can’t even imagine (and I don’t wanna) what path my life would have followed if I hadn’t discovered this herd and all the amazing people I’ve met along the way. We’ve all shared something: love of horses. Love of WILD horses. Love of mustangs.

Remember that promise-breaker? I realized several years ago that I’m *grateful* to him. I definitely couldn’t see it at the time of what felt like deep betrayal by the system, but if not for that guy, would my Irish stubbornness have come to the fore and would I have dug my boots and heart so deep into ground I’d never known but has become my rooted ground?? As I said: *grateful*.

Winona with sons Cheveyo and Lyra; Lyra is gone now, and Cheveyo is a band stallion; Winona, of course, is one of our wise ones

And you know what? Holy … horse. 🙂 Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area today is one of the best managed herds in the country (if not the best? forgive me a tiny bit of bias, please, but I don’t know of any others quite like ours). I am so grateful to the BLM folks at Tres Rios Field Office who made that happen and continue to work with our shared goal in mind.

Because we shared a dream and a goal and got to work doing it, not sitting by waiting for someone else to come along and dig in and get ‘er done. I sure didn’t start that dream for Spring Creek Basin, but I tip my visor to those who did … those who welcomed me to the fold so I could join the journey to the goal. And in that time, we have gotten done EVERYTHING we’ve aimed to achieve … bar one that we haven’t gone full force on, and that’s in the hands of bureaucrats, really, which is unfortunate, but it’s still possible.

Comanche’s band in the dust of early summer, 2020

I’ll probably (of course I will) write another long-winded post about this on my actual 20th anniversary, but on this, my 19th, *thank you* to every single person who has given even the tiniest bit of love to Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs. My love and gratitude to each one of you.

And hang on for (at least!) another year, with the mustangs and me, to celebrate the big 2-0. 🙂 No worries: The 20th won’t be anywhere close to the end. To paraphrase something I heard someone say someone told him: I will continue to make as positive an impact as I can in all the time I’m given in and for Spring Creek Basin and its mustangs.

I’m so glad you’re here, with us.

*Grateful*

Comanche’s band, under the rainbow, 2020; Comanche also is gone now

Comments : 33 Comments »

Categories : Advocacy, BLM, Brumley Point, Claude Steelman, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Education, Fertility control, La Sal Mountains, Mustangs, Partnership, Pati Temple, Rainbow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Spring Creek canyon, Tres Rios Field Office, Wilderness, Wildlife, Work projects

Welcome rain

15 09 2026

We got some rain. 🙂 (Zoom in to see actual drops of actual, falling rain!)

A proper toad-gagger across Disappointment Valley and across Spring Creek Basin. Zoom in above to see rain drops. … This, pictured, was NOT the toad-gagger; that happened much earlier (before daylight). This was the third or fourth wave. A non-stop symphony of thunder banging the drums across the sky, and it was … *magnificent*.

THE best thing to do after getting rained on? Roll! Almost all the horses rolled when the rain stopped and they wandered out to resume browsing.

Ahhhh. Fresh.

Spring Creek was still running, though low, at the first crossing, but clearly it had run high! By the time I got there, the water definitely was slowing. I’d gone first to where Spring Creek runs under Road 19Q (Disappointment Road), before I went to Spring Creek Basin, and it was rolling along then and there like a proper creek).

Toad’s-eye view of Spring Creek looking upstream. That sky brought the next wave of rain – and thunder rolls.

Absolutely, absolutely fabulous. 🙂 And the forecast is looking extra promising this week (as long as said forecast proves accurate and doesn’t just bomb, as it has so often this year). Dance, pray and cross everything for us. 🙂

**********

In other news, some of you may remember that I was a member of the Colorado Wild Horse Working Group a couple of years ago. That group was created by Senate Bill 23-275 (2023) as part of the Wild Horse Project to enable the state to provide support to BLM’s management of wild horses in Colorado. A second bill, House Bill 25-1283 (2025), created a program for wild horses within the Colorado Department of Agriculture, along with an advisory committee for that program. I’m now a member of this new committee.

The first bill came with $1.5 million, much of which was granted to Colorado’s boots-on-the-ground advocacy groups for range-improvement projects and fertility-control support. The second bill comes with no funding. Earlier this year, the Colorado Legislature approved a new license plate design, to join the 270 (!) current designs, to funnel funding to the state’s new wild horse program for further on-range fertility-control support as well as off-range (post-roundup) support of Colorado mustangs and adopters.

CDA has just released a survey with several license plate designs, and you, the public, are encouraged to vote for your favorite. As stated, if you participate in the survey, think about this: “Which design will help sell the most plates” … to offer the most financial support. Colorado’s campaign for wolf-related license plates – “Born to be Wild” – apparently generated around $1 million in its first year.

If you’re so inclined, please follow this link to get to the survey to vote for plates and describe what you like and don’t about each plate. Keep in mind that visibility and identifying *wild* horses as the subject are the main goals in order to encourage people to buy these plates for their vehicles to help support Colorado’s wild horses.

And if you’re a vehicle-driving Coloradan, the plates likely will be available next year.

Thank you!

Comments : 10 Comments »

Categories : Advocacy, BLM, Colorado, Colorado Department of Agriculture, Education, Fertility control, Mustangs, Partnership, PZP, Rain, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Tres Rios Field Office, Water, Water catchment, Wild horses in the news

Bats, baby!

5 09 2026

Surveying bats by sound isn’t what most people would think of as exciting.

You hike out, put up a pole, do some techy stuff, lock the box and hide the wires from mouthy varmints and curious critters, and that’s it. You don’t actually SEE the bats (nocturnal/crepuscular as they are).

…

Ha! Those are the mechanics of it, but what BLM biologists and other biologists and scientists can learn from that type of little jaunt is SOOOOO cool!!

After BLM wildlife biologist Bridget Frederick returns for the pole and things, she’ll take the recording box back to the office and run it through the computer to find out what species of bats are fluttering around the night sky in that area of Spring Creek Basin (location mum to protect the ongoing coolness of future surveys). BLM folks have been monitoring this site since 2020, and altogether, Bridget (and other wildlife biologists?) monitors 21 sites across all of the half a million BLM acres in Southwest Colorado managed by Tres Rios Field Office. (And if you’re a BLM wildlife biologist who invited a recovering journalist along for the adventure (OK, OK, I may totally have invited myself along), you patiently (!) answer lots and lots of questions!)

She uses a program called “sonobat” to decipher the echolocation squeaks of the individual bats and identify the species of bats picked up by the recordings (like listening for and identifying the songs and calls and trills of birds), and it’s all part of the North American Bat Monitoring Program.

And you thought Spring Creek Basin was all about mustangs. 🙂

Hopefully I’ve done some work to dispel that notion, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never written about bats before! To know that we’re (Spring Creek Basin and Tres Rios) contributing to the overall knowledge of bats is just the sort of thing to make me giddy. Bridget said they’re basically surveying the overall population of bats in the area, including fluctuations in those populations because overall, bat numbers are declining, just like bees and songbirds. Part of that might be diminishing habitat, insecticides, challenges to migration corridors (just like with big mammal species like deer, elk and pronghorns) and a particular challenge: white-nose syndrome. That’s a deadly fungal disease affecting hibernating bats in North America, and NABat is tracking its devastating impacts across the continent. While BLM’ers and others haven’t found it particularly in our area, it has been found elsewhere in Colorado and in neighboring Utah.

As if The Colorado Sun knew I was just about to post about bats, it ran this article yesterday: “Colorado’s bats live in surprising places. Biologists, and volunteer observers, are trying to find them; From abandoned mines to high mountain slopes, biologists and volunteers with Colorado Bat Watch are searching for bats to better understand their populations as white-nose syndrome spreads.” Check it out; maybe it will inspire you to join a “bat watch” group in your area.

Bridget sent this about the multitude of different species they’ve heard in the last six years in that part of Spring Creek Basin:

Here is a list of bats that we have recorded at the site in Spring Creek Basin. We started this site in 2020:

Can you even believe all those different species of bats? As anyone who has visited and been subjected to the dreaded gnats and biting flies can attest, we (should) love bats!

Before we go any further, I won’t hear a negative thing about bats because bats are bazinga-cool! (What’s a Batman reference?) Honestly, humans should be doing as much for bats as for butterflies and bees and cuddlier things (ha!). Other than the moon, I’m not real great at photographing things in the dark, but wow, I’d love to catch sight – and a photo – of any kind of bat. If I was confident it wouldn’t be messed with, I’d love to put a trail cam up at the water-catchment trough not too far away. Wouldn’t it be cool to see what critters use it other than the mustangs?

Makin’ it work

7 08 2026

Mid-week in Spring Creek Basin, early morning to beat the 100-degree afternoon temps, a couple of *my* BLM guys gathered with me for some fixin’s. Not food; water-related.

BLM seasonal range tech Jim Siscoe came out to fix/replace the broken piece in the wildcat valley water catchment trough! This means that I can leave the valve on for the water to fill the trough automatically as the horses drink it down without turning the valve on to fill the trough and off so it doesn’t drain all our precious water from the catchment tanks. If you were with us in 2021, you’ll recognize Jim as part of the dream team who built the first of two new water catchments in Spring Creek Basin (along with Mike Jensen, Garth Nelson and Daniel Chavez).

Jim had asked that the trough be dry for the work, as he wasn’t sure he’d be able to insert the new piece if the pipe was covered by water.

Obviously, the trough was still about half to three-quarters full! He did say the cool water felt great, and it didn’t hamper his fixit skills at all. 🙂

And really, I don’t think I can be blamed because I’d last filled the trough three days earlier, thinking that would be plenty of time for the horses to drink down the water. (Actually, I was a little worried about them not having water there when they’d gotten used to finding water there. … I needn’t have worried.)

What it means – because when I’ve been out there filling it with two, three, four bands visible nearby-ish – is that the horses have plenty of other water sources (many of which I’ve seen and know about), which, as you might imagine in these scary drought times, gives me a huge sense of relief. And Jim, awesome as he is, went with the flow (get it) and had the new piece inserted and the whole thing fixed in about five minutes flat. 🙂

That done, we went to the northwest valley to meet Anton Rambur (BLM rangeland management specialist). There followed discussion of what it will take to fix the pipe that connects the tanks, broken last fall when the basin got so MUCH rain that it flooded around the middle tank and literally popped it up out of the ground.

Jim points out where they’ll need to start digging to work their way up to that middle tank (as shown, it’s second from left) in order to get it out and get to the below-ground pipe.

See all the green discs at the front of each tank? Those top a vertical culvert that protects and allows access to the bottom of each tank. A pipe comes straight out from each tank and Ts at a pipe that runs horizontally across each each tank. At the far end, a pipe then runs down the hill to the trough, seen behind/beyond Anton and Jim.

Problem pipe. This is the tank that got popped up with the force of that flooding rain last fall. The pipes were no match for the force of that water, so they broke on each side of the T. The only thing that stopped the tank from being lifted right out of the ground was the roof overhead.

The fix: Rent a mini excavator again, use it to fix the road all the way back to the northwest valley, then dig out the pipe and tank. Replace the tank and fix/replace the pipe(s) and valve. We’re also going to put in a midway valve so I can turn it off if we have a problem again because right now, while we have a semi-fix, when I turn on the valves to the two end tanks, water runs down to the trough, but it also backs up and gurgles into that culvert Jim is pointing to. Last job for the mini ex: Build up the berm again at the back of the line of tanks and dig a trench to carry water around/beyond the tanks in the future when it, you know, floods again. Because in the desert, we have to prepare for both drought and the goodness of “too much” water (I mean, nobody ever considers any amount of water to be *TOO MUCH* water in the desert … but it can be destructive when it comes all at once).

Jim and Anton talk over the water cooler … err, water trough. 🙂 Beats an office any day (though it’s always nice to retreat to office AC when the heat is this bad!).

Jim is the resident “weed killer” at Tres Rios Field Office, and he does a great job. Here, he took advantage of being out in the basin to spray cockleburs, Russian thistle (tumbleweed) and Russian knapweed downhill of the catchment in the drainage that leads to the pond (left and dry).

Wider view that shows the catchment up to the left. The trough is barely visible behind that single juniper.

We were out early enough to beat most of the heat, make a good fix, run some water, talk about another fix, spray some weeds. No matter the conditions, we’re makin’ it work.

Comments : 9 Comments »

Categories : Advocacy, McKenna Peak, Partnership, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte, Tres Rios Field Office, Water, Water catchment

Thanks … and request

27 05 2026

Big day in Spring Creek Basin yesterday, and I want to give a big shout-out to everyone who had a hand in the rescue of a young visitor from the Midwest.

The visitor had a Garmin In-Reach communication device and with that, was able to reach her mother, who contacted Tres Rios Field Office, who got the message to one of my awesome BLM folks, Ryan Schroeder, who was able to reach me. She also reached out to the fine folks at Colorado 4×4 Rescue and Recovery, who have assisted us previously with another stuck vehicle. San Miguel Sheriff’s Office personnel and BLM law-enforcement rangers also were notified and aware of the situation.

It’s worth noting that cell service in the basin, no matter what service you have (and if you don’t have AT&T, you’re pretty well toast), is spotty, and there’s nothing in the area where she got stuck.

Huge, huge thanks to neighbor Tyrell, who jumped into action with his daughter, Makena, and their big tractor to motor deep into Spring Creek Basin on rough roads where lesser vehicles might fear to roll (for good reason, really :)) to pull out the visitor’s vehicle and get her safely on the return path out of the basin.

Another note, and this is not a criticism of the visitor herself, who had never been to Spring Creek Basin: Please be aware of and HEED the “no motor vehicles” signs. Not only are those in place to protect the very fragile and incredibly drought-stressed soil and vegetation the mustangs depend on to survive, they’re placed where they are to protect humans as well. She missed the sign while following heavy tire tracks from other visitors – DIRECTLY PAST A SIGN. Those folks are going around an erosion-caused washout across the road, and while I understand the desire to explore farther, that illegal bypass route not only has destroyed the vegetation in that area, it led directly to someone getting her vehicle stuck miles and miles from help. If she hadn’t had her communication device, she would have had a LONG walk out to the main road, and as few people pass through Disappointment Valley on any given day, and she didn’t have cell service, help might have been a long time coming. I was planning a visit to the basin yesterday evening, but her vehicle wasn’t visible from the road, and *I* don’t pass that initial washout and sign, which I helped our BLM guys place last fall! I’d never have found her if I wasn’t actively looking for her.

That is NOT ground to be driven over! At least one person apparently heeded the sign and turned around. The water catchment is directly behind me from this image, and someone had literally driven directly over branches that I’ve dragged down the hill, along with old, dead tree trunks, and placed all along the other side of the road (I’m actually standing on the road, and the washout is directly to the right) to try to keep people from driving on THAT fragile soil and vegetation just because they’re too lazy to get out of the buggy or truck to walk down and look at the catchment system closer.

The sign and blockade had mostly worked. … Those tracks from before (see the above link to last November’s sign-posting) had semi-healed … until this recent spate of destruction. We shouldn’t have to pepper the basin with signs asking people to respect the land and wildlife. (And I haven’t even posted about all the wanton, deliberate destruction I’ve seen in other places this year, last year, every year, from multiple “poor apple” visitors. It makes me mad and sad in equal measure every time I see it.)

So two parts to this post:

BIG THANKS to all the people who came together to get this visitor and her vehicle safely out of Spring Creek Basin! You are all so very appreciated!

And please, *please*, consider the mustangs and other wildlife when you visit Spring Creek Basin. Your momentary “fun” has very real and lasting negative impacts. Please visit with respect.

We want you to enjoy the scenery and mustangs of Spring Creek Basin, and we want you to make it home … from our home.

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: adventure, camping, hiking, nature, travel
Categories : Advocacy, BLM, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Education, McKenna Peak, Partnership, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte, Tres Rios Field Office

A lotta little all – or awe

16 04 2026

Tuesday was a wild and crazy day … and that was just the weather. It was ultimately a successful day, though at least one part left me shaking my head at, well, how life unfolds. And it was a reminder that sometimes the smallest things, and the simplest things, are the most enjoyable of all.

From yesterday’s post, are you wondering what graupel looks like? (Thanks, Valerie, for your comment that led to this post!)

What? I hear you asking. That looks like snow or rain, you’re saying (zoom in to see the streaks). Look on the ground in the lower right corner. I was backed in under a (dead) tree to sit out one wave of it (it wasn’t very hard, and it didn’t last long) at that little side “road” to Disappointment Road, which is across the whole pic. See the little white “balls”?

AI says this: “Graupel, or soft hail, forms when supercooled water droplets freeze onto falling snowflakes, creating soft, small white pellets (2-5 mm) that resemble Dippin’ Dots or Styrofoam. These fragile, slushy particles are often called snow pellets and, unlike hard hail, crumble easily. They occur during wintry mix scenarios, causing sudden, slick conditions, and are identified in aviation reports as ‘GS’.”

I liked this part: Types of Graupel
While commonly called graupel, it is sometimes referred to as:

Matsaaruti: A term used in the Nunavik region of Canada to describe wet, soft snow pellets.

Snow Pellets

Soft Hail

Hominy Snow

I encourage you to Google “graupel” because there’s a lot more. Or check this NOAA description of hail types.

Another pic from the same location as the first pic, looking pretty much straight north at what I call west-of-favorite hill (because it’s, you know, west of what I call favorite hill, which I so-named because once upon a very long time ago, “the pintos” really favored that hill and could very often be found atop it).

Also from the same spot, looking eastish again as the graupel wave recedes, driven by a strong out-of-the-south wind (I lost track, but at least three, maybe four went over us Tuesday morning). You can see Brumley Point very distinctly, submarine ridge and McKenna Peak to the left it it, and you can’t quite make out Temple Butte. If you slide back up to the first pic, Temple Butte is juuuuuust barely visible at far left, just under the power lines. And yes, the sunshine IS coming back out over the rest of us while the wave pushes north to the east.

With Artemis II and its remarkable human beings on board, their mission, their accomplishments, the images they sent back, from space looking home, in mind … and realizing the absolute tiny-ness of this one itty-bitty part of our great, wide, wild, wonderful, big blue marble … ain’t Earth gorgeous? Now you can see Temple Butte’s promontory emerging from behind Brumley Point (see the graupel/moisture evidence shining below its rimrocks?) and submarine ridge and McKenna Peak. And though you can’t see them in this pic, there were two groups of mustangs out there. Across the road and on the other side of that fence IS Spring Creek Basin.

Anybody know what this prickly little caterpillar is called? I’m not sure of the plant it’s on, either.

I tried a lot, but I could NOT get the eye end (far left – is that an eye?) in focus. Of course, I didn’t know that in the field, not having my eyeball glasses on and looking through the glare of my phone screen, but I did try a number of shots with high hopes. One of our BLM range guys recently posted a pic of the same caterpillar, but he’s a plant guy (and an extraordinarily awesome one), not a bug guy, so I’m sure he can tell me the plant, if not the bug (!). If I reach him for an ID before this posts (or even after), I’ll update.

** Update from Ryan, BLM rangeland management specialist and all-around plant guy!:

“Cool that you’re seeing the same caterpillar! [He saw the same kind recently in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, southwest of Spring Creek Basin.] I’m very curious as to what species of butterfly/moth they will turn into, I’m not good at insect ID but will ask Nate West [BLM wildlife biologist]. The plant that those are on is a mustard species called Alyssum simplex, commonly just called madwort. It’s a pretty prevalent non-native annual that is really common around here, unfortunately. It’s a beautiful picture of the hair-structure on the caterpillar!” Thanks, Ryan!

The reason you can’t see Utah’s La Sal Mountains in this pic – way northwest of Spring Creek Basin, from the very far southeastern part of Spring Creek Basin – is because the rain/graupel/snow wasn’t through sending waves over them. 🙂 You CAN see, from right to left, Round Top, Flat Top (looks sloping), Filly Peak and the south-facing rimrocks. Disappointment Road is over to the left somewhere (not far)

From here, we’re looking over not much of the southern part of Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area (the pic above this one has a perspective to the right of this one) but a lot of the south/southwestern part of Disappointment Valley (most but not all of the pinon-juniper woodlands as far as the eye can see). The near pinon-juniper is within Spring Creek Basin.

From the same spot now looking back to the south/southeast at another little rain/snow/graupel-fall, toward the Glade and Benchmark Lookout (hi, Rick and Linda! (I think they’re not at the fire lookout tower quite yet)). The near hills and pinon-juniper are all within Spring Creek Basin. The far, thickly treed ridges are partly (middle-ish ground) part of upper Disappointment Valley and partly (farther) part of San Juan National Forest lands beyond Disappointment Valley and its watershed.

And what the heck was I doing at the high end of a long drop? See the horse trail? 🙂 I was following where the sure-footed have gone before me (and not for the first time).

The above are in order of how I took them … hours apart from first to last.

And because you came here for the mustangs …

Mysterium, modeling her scruffy-chic look (fashion designers, take note – ha!) below Temple Butte. 🙂 Yes, those are a couple of cuts on the inside of her left hind leg, but she’ll heal quickly, as mustangs do!

Thanks, as always, for coming along for glimpses of this special world. 🙂

Comments : 12 Comments »

Categories : Brumley Point, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Graupel, La Sal Mountains, McKenna Peak, McKenna Peak Wilderness Study Area, Spring, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte, The Glade, Tres Rios Field Office, Wild flowers, Wildlife

Spring to snow

4 04 2026

Wait, that’s not a mustang, I hear you thinking. 🙂 Correct! That’s a young mule deer, and s/he starts the journey of this particular blog post (which doesn’t include a mustang in sight). S/he was, in fact, inside Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, and I was on the road.

But let’s back up a moment.

This is where my short trip up-Disappointment-Valley actually started: Seeing snow completely covering nearby Lone Cone from just within the southern part of Spring Creek Basin (not quite as far south/southeast as the mule deer). Except for the very southern area, Lone Cone isn’t visible from most of the basin. (And that promontory in the distance isn’t Temple Butte, which is closer and to my left out of frame.)

Much, most – all?? – of the region got blissful, sweet, rejuvenating rain (at least) on Wednesday. Obviously, higher elevations got some welcome snow. I write a lot about how dry it is in Disappointment Valley and, specifically, Spring Creek Basin. I’ve been writing a lot this “winter” about how dry it has been this past non-winter. It gives me no pleasure and a lot of terror to note that folks are now calling this the “worst [winter] on record,” according to The Colorado Sun. How bad is it?

“It’s now safe to conclude that this has been the worst year for Colorado snowpack in recorded history,” [Colorado Climate Center’s Russ] Schumacher wrote in his blog Thursday. (Note: Find his blog here.)

So consider this post part education, part joy at seeing Lone Cone covered in snow (at least for a little while). The words or phrases in blue (and possibly underlined) indicate links to outside sources. It’s going to be a little bit of a long post, too (sorry to bury the lede!), so grab your brew of choice and come along with me – and also, I should tell you now that this spans back-to-back days, an evening (Thursday) and the following morning (Friday). You’ll see why as we follow the snow. 🙂

I love Temple Butte. I loved Pati Temple, for whom the butte is named. Previously and for several years, I called it the unnamed promontory, and because it was unnamed, officially, we were able to apply to the U.S. Geological Survey, five years after her passing, to start the process to honor Pati and her dedicated devotion to Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs. Huge thanks to Kat Wilder for coming up with “Temple Butte” as a name, and especially ginormous thanks to Ann Bond (retired from the U.S. Forest Service) for diving deep into the computer work to get that done – undying gratitude! Now it is *officially* Temple Butte, though it’s hard to find maps yet with it marked as such. Our new kiosk at the main western entrance to Spring Creek Basin has a map that shows it (thanks, BLM!!), but when I did a Google search, although I came up with other Temple Butte(s) (!), I found only this reference to ours. It’s a super cool sort of AI rendition of looking at the region as though you’re on top of the butte. Move the view around, and you can see numerous named points of view, including McKenna Peak and Brumley Point. I’ve never been atop either Temple Butte or McKenna Peak, or Brumley Point, though I’ve been way up its sides, but I imagine you can’t help but have noticed that Temple Butte and McKenna Peak (at least) favor heavily in a lot of my images of Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs from all over the basin. 😉

I continued driving up-valley. …

I was so surprised to see this flock of turkeys that I almost didn’t realize at first what I was seeing!

Question: Why are turkeys SO hard to photograph?? Even when I’ve seen them close, my pix of them are almost always blurry. You’d think that with a bird THAT huge, they’d be a cinch. … Yeah, but those tiny heads are, well, tiny! I do love that you can see the color in this tom’s head and some of the greenish iridescence of his gorgeous feathers. There might have been eight to 12 birds in this flock?

Not much farther, I stopped in the middle of the road and shot over the hood to try to catch these two young bull elk and a cow as they raced across the road and into the trees near some cattle pens belonging to up-valley neighbors. Note the “orange” pines in the background. Not even in Southwest Colorado are we escaping the deaths of ponderosas (and other conifers) across Colorado and the West because of drought and insects.

According to the Colorado State Forest Service, there were more than 800 million standing dead trees as of this report from 2017: “Colorado’s decades-long mountain pine beetle epidemic resulted in almost 3.4 million acres with some degree of tree mortality; an ongoing spruce beetle epidemic has thus far resulted in 1.7 million impacted acres.”

Thankfully, there also are many live ponderosas. At this point, way up-valley, I was starting to get amazing views of Groundhog Mountain. “Groundhog” in this neck of the woods generally refers more to Groundhog Reservoir, where there’s a store and rental cabins and a tiny community of summer cabins. From this view of Groundhog Mountain, those are over yonder on the other side. In the view above – and also of Lone Cone – I was fascinated to see that the trees on the lower shoulders of both mountains were still cloaked in snow. And if you look closely at the above image, you can see that crazy ol’ wind blowing snow from the peak.

Looks pretty wintry, eh? But I think you can tell, even from this distance, that the snow layer is thin. The lower stands of trees are aspen, which are only just beginning to bud and leaf out (depending on elevation; I did see a couple of small pockets of aspen wearing their brand-new bright-green spring leaves).

Traffic jam! Disappointment-Valley-style. 🙂 Look at that GREEN. GRASS!

The elk didn’t cross the road to get to the green grass (there was plenty where they’d crossed from) but because the other side of the road features wide-open meadows and more of their friends and family. Almost all I saw in this crowd were cows and youngsters with some young bulls still hanging onto associations with mamas and aunties. There weren’t a huge number of them … fewer than 75, I’d guess.

What a contrast, right? The “ugly” head – but those colors! love! – with the absolutely gorgeous feathers. (The darkness at right is the back of my back truck window.) They’re also hard to photograph because they’re faster than you think they should be. This poor guy and another one were “stuck” on the road side of the fence …

… but they very quickly flapped and flew those big bodies over the fence to rejoin their flock. (I can’t get over how green it is up-valley. This is just several miles above the south end of Spring Creek Basin.)

The sun was quickly nearing the western horizon when I took this and the next couple of pix. Great timing, especially with some stormy clouds still swirling above and beyond Groundhog Mountain.

That light! That snow. 🙂 (You can see how not very far down it isn’t there at all.)

It’s still winter somewhere. 🙂 For a little bit longer. Lone Cone snow provides the water that eventually flows down Disappointment Creek, so the more snow, the better. That water doesn’t benefit the mustangs in Spring Creek Basin, but it benefits numerous other species of wildlife from way up high all the way to the canyons of the Dolores River at the far lower end of Disappointment Valley.

Admit it, you didn’t think it could get better. 🙂 When I first was at the upper end of the valley, the clouds were giving Groundhog Mountain the dramatic, bold light and color. This was pretty immediately post-sunset, and the clouds had drifted over to light up the sky above Lone Cone (Groundhog Mountain is farther to the right from this perspective). Um, WOW.

Here we go: A cellphone pic from the “lookout curve” on the switchbacks that lead up and out of Disappointment Valley on the Dolores-Norwood Road (toward Dolores) shows Lone Cone at left and Groundhog Mountain at right at just about last light. I couldn’t have timed that better (the curve was my ultimate destination) if I’d tried (and I did!).

Then it was a down-valley drive as the light faded. Fortunately, though I watched hard, no kamikaze elk or turkeys (or even deer) shared the road with me. I missed full-moonrise this month because of the weather (if you think I’m complaining, please allow me to reiterate my eternal gratitude for the mostly daylong rainfall!!!), and although there were some colorful clouds, they were mostly drifting along the horizons by dark, so I thought maybe I’d get to see the night-after-full-moonrise from farther down-valley. …

This is from my phone (!): Moonrise over Disappointment Valley. WoWoWoWoW!!!

It took a bit for the moon to clear the horizon clouds, but holy wow. You can clearly see Temple Butte and Brumley Point under the glow of the moon. While I’m sure the view of space FROM space (lookin’ at ya’ll, Artemis II astronauts!) is, ahem, otherworldly, I kinda think the above is pretty damn cool (and from my *phone*!). This might be my favorite image from the entire day/night.

Because I couldn’t resist trying to capture it with my camera, too. 🙂 Those are clouds at lower left as the moon was rising out of the cloud bank.

What a day, right?! And that was literally just about the last three hours of it.

And then the next morning came. … My phone’s weather app’s radar showed spots of snow over Disappointment Valley. Oh, you liar, thought I (because it so usually does lie). … And then I went out into the world.

Well, knock me over with a feather! It DID snow … up-valley, not mid- or lower valley (nor did it rain). In the foreground are very newly leafed-out cottonwoods along Disappointment Creek, and in the midground are part of the rimrocks that form the southwestern boundary of Spring Creek Basin. In the background, starting at far right: Flat Top, Round Top and submarine ridge; smack dab in the middle, McKenna Peak; and towering o’er all, Temple Butte.

And from up-valley:

What I call submarine ridge at far left … and McKenna Peak just right of dead center. The very top/back ridge, if you follow it right, ends in Temple Butte.

Voila!

That snow will soak in; it’s not enough to produce runoff. And it was windy again, which further contributes to drying.

The tiniest bit of a tiny dusting still lingered in shady places under trees (this was just inside the Spring Creek Basin boundary from up-valley along Disappointment Road). Evidence that it HAD, in fact, snowed in the area.

And one last view, of Groundhog Mountain, through a curtain of snow!

It’s a crazy world. 🙂

It’s a crazy BEAUTIFUL world! 🙂

Thanks for coming along. Hope you enjoyed our (temporary) retreat to winter. Snow or rain, we need any and/or all that Mother Nature wishes to bestow.

Comments : 12 Comments »

Categories : Brumley Point, Colorado, Cottonwood trees, Disappointment Valley, Lone Cone, McKenna Peak, McKenna Peak Wilderness Study Area, Moon, Mule deer, Pati Temple, Snow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte, Tres Rios Field Office, unnamed promontory, Wilderness, Wildlife

Recap of 2025

31 12 2025

To remember how I did this post last year, I had to go all the way back to Valentine’s Day to find the post recapping the previous year (2024, then) in images. This year (for 2025), I’m happy to announce that for once, though I procrastinated, it wasn’t THAT long, and it was in plenty of time (OK, one day to spare) to make the Dec. 31 deadline.

Deep breath: This was a hard year. Last winter was rough (read: bad dry), which meant the rest of the year was rough (read: really bad horrible awful dry) in terms of drought. Monsoons didn’t hit their stride over Southwest Colorado, so we didn’t get much rain, either. Federal employees were hard hit, too, and one of our young BLM’ers was illegally fired from the new job he loved.

But we also had some good-news happenings: Thankfully, he was reinstated, and we have a strong range team in Ryan, Anton and Laura. We got some new signs installed, including the replacement of the old, sun-bleached, weather-beaten interpretive sign for the new information “kiosk” that greets visitors upon entering Spring Creek Basin. Fertility control (native PZP) continues to be an extraordinary benefit to our herd in terms of management and keeping roundups and removals at bay.

In wider Colorado mustang news, the BLM short-term holding facility at the Cañon City prison complex closed in November, BLM and Colorado Department of Corrections being unable to reach a contract agreement. That’s not-great news in terms of uncertainty for rounded up and removed Colorado mustangs. Where will they go? In semi-balanced decent news (?), all of the Colorado mustangs that were in holding there (about 100 at the time) were adopted or went to private sanctuary or are currently in foster situations for a planned adoption in March (and that all happened despite federal employees, including BLM’ers, being out of work (or working without pay) because of the government shutdown).

What follows is a pic from each month of the past year and a bit of reminiscence of what was happening when I captured the image of a mustang or mustangs. Many of these pix have been featured previously on the blog; some haven’t. If you make it to the end, there’s a bonus pic … one of my favorite of the past year.

This is one of my very most favorite pix of the entire year. I love it so much, it’s the background image on my computer. I’m aware that I likely post a lot of images of Buckeye’s family; you won’t be surprised to know that they’re among my most favorite mustangs. I considered this image as the *bonus* image … but it was one wildly beautiful day of snow (well, I was out with the horses, watching the snow coming for at least two hours before it finally reached us), and it didn’t match the otherwise very dry *year*. … So it gets the January title.

Did I say that I love Buckeye’s family? You can forgive me for singling them out, right? The three mares weren’t born here, but gosh, they are treasures from our sister herd in Sand Wash Basin, and I’m so grateful that we have them. And yes, that was February. Utah’s La Sal Mountains may not have been the *closest* snow, but we sure didn’t have much.

March is still fuzzy-coat weather with signs of approaching spring, especially in the high desert of Southwest Colorado. Fortunately, we had ponds early in the year. They’d all go dry before some rain this past fall put water back in a couple of them, including the one pictured above with Chipeta. This pond is nicely full currently – and has mustangs taking advantage of its water.

April found Sundance not far from the pond pictured above, and he still had his band at that time. Later in the year, he lost them, and he’s been by himself since then. He has wandered a bit, following vegetation and available water. The stately ol’ guy is still around … I see him now and then, napping in the sunshine or grazing on the side of a ridge.

This wasn’t especially the best pic I took in May, but I love both the perspective and the sort of inside joke that Cassidy Rain always likes to be the farthest away from the two-legged. That day was a pretty warm one, and the band was in an area of basin where I rarely find them. It’s not a place with a lot of trees (in fact, there are very few), but they had found a couple, and were comfortable together in the shade near sunset.

My best boy Storm made a brief appearance in the northern part of the basin in June … one of the first times I’d seen him since he’d lost his band the previous autumn. Bittersweet. I haven’t seen him since about July, when he was at a water source with another band as I was trying to shoot the rising moon.

Ah, July, the month the Deer Creek Fire at the base of Utah’s La Sal Mountains sparked. It wasn’t the biggest wildfire of the season, and it wasn’t even the biggest with smoke visible from Spring Creek Basin and Disappointment Valley, but it was uncomfortably close to home. It was a reminder (as if we need any more) that it’s hotter and dryer out there, and we all need to be super aware and careful.

Fortunately, the mustangs live in the moment (while the humans obsess over the wildfire updates), and they still enjoyed peaceful days such as this: Three mares content with their world and each other.

Finally, as summer gave way to fall, Mother Nature cried her best tears and filled some ponds for the mustangs. THAT brought huge relief to us all (if I may speak for my four-legged friends as well as myself). Interestingly, visible at upper left in this image is Benchmark Lookout, a U.S. Forest Service wildfire-watch tower staffed during the critical seasons of the year (which includes September). In this backcountry, we are massively grateful for those who watch for and provide critical information about wildfires, as well as those who work to contain them, allowing them to provide some benefit in some cases while trying to keep property and lives intact.

It might be about now in the list that you’re thinking, “for talking about dry it was, she sure included a lot of pix of ponds.” It’s not because we had so much water; it’s because we’re massively grateful for the water we had.

There’s no water in this image – and it was November, before snow graced the peaks on our northwestern horizon – but the ponies are lined out on their way out to graze after drinking at a little place I call the marsh. This is post-sunset, but wow was it gorgeous under the autumn light. … And it’s not UNgorgeous at blue hour.

You’ve just seen this image of Temple with Temple (yes, the same) Butte and McKenna Peak in the background under a stream of stormy-looking (they didn’t produce a drop over us) clouds. I decided not to choose a pic from the bit of snow we got at the very beginning of December because the above is what we saw the whole rest of the month. The weather has been warm and dry … and that’s awfully nice for getting around and playing outdoors (60s! in Colorado!! in December!!?!) … but if things don’t change in the next few months, I’m going to be singing the same ol’ why-won’t-it-snow song that seems to be stuck on repeat.

And your bonus:

This was an evening in June. Nobody wanted to pose much, and I was going bananas, trying to get somebody – anybody – in front of that background in that subtle, delicious light. Finally, this young stallion obliged. And it seems to sum things up a bit: Hot this year? Yes. Dry? Gosh, yeah. Anxiety-inducing? Pretty much like always … with an extra edge. But! Beautiful, peaceful, a place of escape from the world’s ills (at least the headline type). Kind of a promise that it’s there … out there … and sometimes we don’t have to search all that far for it.

And there you (kinda) have it: 2025 in the rearview. It’s always hard to select just one pic for each month (plus a bonus!), but I hope you enjoyed this little recap.

In best-of-all news, I spent a lot of time (again) with my beloved mustangs in the best place on Earth (in my ever-so-humble opinion). 🙂

And close to that is my gratitude for all of you readers who follow the mustangs and our pictorial journal of peaceful, wild, beautiful life here in Spring Creek Basin. Thank you so much, and I hope you all have a peaceful, wild, beautiful 2026 (with lots more moisture!!!!!!!!!!!!!)!

Be kind to each other! 🙂

Comments : 15 Comments »

Categories : Advocacy, BLM, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Education, La Sal Mountains, McKenna Peak, Mustangs, Partnership, Ponds, Snow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte, The Glade, Tres Rios Field Office, Water, Wildfire, Wildlife, Work projects

Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Up and coming

Tarantula crossing

One more year till 20/25

Welcome rain

Bats, baby!

Makin’ it work

Thanks … and request

A lotta little all – or awe

Spring to snow

Recap of 2025

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