Water catchment | Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Spectacularity

21 10 2026

In yesterday’s post, I promised for today’s post pix of a fairly stunning storm system that blew up over Disappointment Valley in the mid-or-so afternoon through sunset. This will be a photo-heavy (heavy on the heavy) post. The pix also are all from my phone. The immense scale simply wasn’t possible to capture with my long lens and narrow range of view. A few times, I wished I’d gone to the effort of getting my camera out of my backpack … but most of the time, I was too afraid to miss one second of what was happening, and, again, the sheer width of scale of the storm’s coverage across the horizon(s) was just too, well, wide.

I hate to be one of those telling you to “read through till the end” for the best part, but … well, let me know whether the final pix, of sunset light in the EAST, were worth waiting for.

Onward!

As wide a field of view as my phone can capture, it took four images, stitched into a panorama, to produce this image, looking from southeast at right to north-northeast at left. So if possible, imagine the scene not as a flat, two-dimensional view but as a curved (?) view. The storm definitely was coming from the southeast and moving north (left) … and around/beyond the basin, across the north, to the west? I sat for a long time at the main/original catchment watching it and taking pix as the sky evolved – in sunshine the entire time.

This was the first pic I actually took. There’s a pretty obvious downpour straight ahead, which is basically east-northeastish. It was not raining over Spring Creek Basin at this point, but the clouds were definitely shading the far, whole eastern horizon. Thunder was rumbling now and then, but I never saw lightning. The vast majority of the basin was under sunlight. There ARE mustangs way, way out, at the leftish side of the image.

A little more detail of the rain running across the landscape from near/over (?) Benchmark Lookout (at the leftish side of the dark hump of “hill” at far right) across upper Disappointment Valley and beyond Temple Butte (the edge of the promontory is just spotlit by a bit of sunlight).

And swinging a bit more to look east.

Meanwhile, a lighter rain system was moving north to the northWEST. You might be able to make out Utah’s La Sal Mountains through the curtain of rain (way) beyond Spring Creek canyon.

This is roughly what that looked like on the radar (a little delayed, I think). The blue dot was me, in the middle, in the sunshine. 🙂

There are the mountains; see ’em? I think the rain was moving across lower Disappointment Valley and maybe/probably not quite as far west as Utah. I’ve been in the same place taking all these pix (I sat there for quite a long time): at the road by the fenced-enclosed aprons that catch rain (and snow in the winter) and direct that water down to the 12,000-gallon green steel tank … and from there to the main water trough you can see downhill and to the right of the tank. (The farther, smaller, black trough is wired off because it’s a lot smaller, and darker, and the horses don’t prefer it. The big trough is the main trough. You can’t quite tell from this distance, but it has a triangular metal cover over it that enables the horses to get to the water and also helps prevent evaporation (or better than it would be if uncovered).)

And looking southeastish again. Apologies (not really) for the redundant pix … but this is one of my favorite views in the whole, great, wide and wild world … especially when it includes rain!

See how DARK it got to the northeast? Again, that’s beyond Spring Creek Basin – at least at this point (spoiler alert). But see that lit “column” of rain? Wild? I spent a lot of time and phone space taking pix of that cool thing as it moved with the storm system across the northern horizon toward the west (and I was in sunshine all the while).

Checking the progress of the rain to the east-southeast again. At this point, I think it was getting closer to Temple Butte – the rain, not just the shade of the rain clouds.

Another look up to the northeastish at that remarkable flame of spotlit rain. Notice, too, that we’re starting to get a great shadow of clouds over a great portion of the basin now. (I promise there were mustangs out there; I was watching about five bands way, way out while I watched the spectacular sky-show.)

I mean …

… it was …

… just soooooo …

… COOL!

Checking northwest again, over the canyon. That’s the north side at right, and you can just see part of the south side at far left. It’s not that wide; it curves a lot.

Ah! Rain has made it far enough west to cover Temple Butte (the promontory), at least, and maybe reaching McKenna Peak (the pyramid) and the eastern part of Spring Creek Basin. But note how sunny it still is.

Another very wide-angle view (just one frame). At farthest right, definitely getting rained on now: Temple Butte and McKenna Peak. At left, the remnants of that crazy … I don’t even know what to call that?! Looking like someone was shining a gigantic spotlight from the ground to the heavens. And still, I’m sitting in the sunshine.

At that point, I decided to head out. I wasn’t sure about crossing the V-arroyo (it gets pretty pillowy-muddy in heavy rain and is difficult to impossible to cross in that state), and most of the horses were well north of that point – and that’s before you even get to the first Spring Creek crossing. While thunder had been rumbling like a slightly disgruntled giant, I hadn’t seen any lightning, but in the wide open, I have a healthy respect for it (and a recent encounter of a near-simultaneous lightning-strike-thunder-CRACK is pretty close to front of mind lately).

Now I’m at Chrome’s Point in the far western part of Spring Creek Basin, and rain definitely is falling within the basin’s boundaries to the east. If you zoom in on Temple Butte and McKenna Peak, below the left base of McKenna in the golden-landscape area, you’ll see the fenced-in water-catchment aprons (looks a bit like a tennis court). On the road, just left of the far side of the fence corner is where I sat to take all the photos above this one.

And from Chrome’s Point looking northish (leftish is almost directly northish). Can you tell that the storm was moving across our north to the west (left)? I know that if you’re not familiar with the area, it’s hard!

So I left the basin thinking “what a great show put on by Mother Nature!” And also that at least the eastern-northeastern part of the basin looked to be getting some of the good wet stuff (which was not in the forecast, by the way). …

Yowza! That’s RAIN. Over SPRING CREEK BASIN! This is looking east while heading south on Disappointment Road, well west of the basin. …

Wait. What is that … ?

What that, you ask? THAT that!

It’s a DUST DEVIL. … With pouring rain in the background! Just like the weird rain column seen earlier from inside Spring Creek Basin, this dust devil was illuminated by the sunlight hitting that part of Disappointment Valley west of Spring Creek Basin (the ridge topped by rimrock at far right is part of the basin’s western boundary). See the far-far ridgeline curtained by rain? That’s the very same northeastern ridge that meets the sky in the previous pix taken within Spring Creek Basin.

I was so wowed that I was standing in the middle of the road holding my phone up and out in the classic pose as a truck was approaching. Fortunately, it was someone who knows me and knows my photo-centricity, and he kindly did not run me over. 🙂

Kinda great for zilch on the rain front in the forecast, eh? 🙂 And I will tell you that the ground was still satisfyingly damp out in the basin last night (as you read this), and now we have another day or three or five (who really knows?!) of rain chances in the forecast.

See the rainbow prism? That’s directly over Filly Peak in Spring Creek Basin.

Did I mention there’s snow again on the mountains on our northwestern horizon (Utah’s La Sals)? As a point of interest, Mount Peale is the highest peak in the range at “12,721 to 12,726 feet.” Moab is on the other side.

There was just about every bit of light imaginable during the time I watched the storm pass: glorious sunlight to dappled light to ominous rain-darkness. Something else interesting? I never got so much as sprinkled on, no matter where I was.

Oh yeah, and the light that produced multi-colored rainbow prisms (can you call it a rainbow if it doesn’t form a bow?). I think there were at least five, maybe six of these prisms. None formed a complete rainbow (if you can believe it), and none of them lasted very long … except this next one:

See the rainbow forming at upper left? (And check out that spotlight at farthest right!) Unfortunately, the prism was faint while the spotlight was on Buck Knob and its vibrant redrock layers, but, um, WOW.

It’s getting a little more visible …

The. Light. Was. Phenomenal.

The cottonwoods along the bottom of this pic line Disappointment Creek. Spring Creek is farther north, running out of Spring Creek Basin, which is to the right/east. They both run westish; Spring Creek runs into Disappointment Creek, and, eventually, FARTHER west, Disappointment Creek carries all its salt and sediment into the Dolores River. This view is looking purty near north. The shorter, yellow-y-er (that’s a word, creatively speaking) vegetation is willow and maybe some rabbitbrush/chamisa, too. The cottonwoods at this elevation are just starting to go gold.

Do you start to see why there are so many pix in this post?! The light KEPT CHANGING. What the heck are those beams right of center?! I never did figure it out.

Wide-wide view for perspective. The road runs straight east here.

And on I went up-valley (to the southeast). I mean, who knew what else Mother Nature had in store?

Disappointment Creek. Picture NO water here, and that’s what it usually looks like. This was when I first realized how heavy the rain must have been that I’d seen earlier … remember the very first pix at the top of this post? Spring Creek Basin is across the road (that I’m on) to the left.

It’s really hard to understand how this is such an astounding view if you don’t know what it usually looks like, but for one thing, there are usually giant rocks visible in the creek bed there.

This is Black Snag Road; Disappointment Road is about 100 yards behind me. … Actually, this is Disappointment Creek – err, river – making fun of the idea of there being a road under that rollin’ water (let alone a culvert … ha ha ha!?). This is where I wish I was adept at video and/or even knowing how to insert it. Because the sheer volume of NOISE (let alone water) was INCREDIBLE. Larry W. is the Dolores County road guy for this part of Disappointment Road; I couldn’t help but think of him while I watched this; it will fall to him to fix this … eventually.

That pile of dark dirt is sort of the edge of … well … where the water shouldn’t have gone around?! Seriously, do not mess with Mother Nature. She makes her own paths.

I’m not entirely sure where those rocks would have come from. I hadn’t been down to look at the crossing for quite a while until this moment, but the road is sort of … there.

It was hard to take a still pic that conveyed the noise and just sheer quantity of water rolling through the *ahem* creek bed. You see the rocks … and up to the right is a WAVE of mud-water. I think the culvert is sort of in that area? And/or rocks meant to stabilize it and the edge of the road.

Disappointment River. 🙂 Seriously.

Meanwhile, this was happening behind me (as I looked at the river, err, creek crossing); looking in this direction, the creek is behind me. Disappointment Road runs across the base of the pic; down-valley (northwestish) is left, and up-valley (southeastish) is right. The fence along the road – the boundary of Spring Creek Basin – is visible at left and right. The foreground is part of Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, but Temple Butte – lit up at right – is outside the basin, as is McKenna Peak, the tip and eroded slopes of which are visible at left.

Nope, it was not over!

Disappointment Creek flowing downstream from just upstream of the Black Snag Road crossing.

It was *this* close to sunset. 🙂

Mother Nature wasn’t close to done for the day.

I mean … can you die of absolute, heart-bursting joy at the gorgeousity of the world?! Hopefully not; too much yet to see. I hope you’ve stuck with me. … Really, it gets BETTER.

Are you sitting down? You might want to sit down.

As I went back down-valley, THAT was happening behind me. Ahead of me (behind me as I take these pix), to the west, the clouds were nearly gone, the sky nearly clear again. The color was all back to the east. (Note: These horses are not in Spring Creek Basin. I’ve never crossed over here, but this sunset was too amazing not to share, and this is where I was when I saw it.)

My jaw might have been on the ground. I hope you find these colors and cloud shapes impressive. … The pix don’t really do it justice; it was one of the top most spectacular sunsets I’ve seen in my life.

I might finally have run out of words.

Was it worth it? 🙂

WHAT. A. DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mama Nature, I never cease to be amazed. Keep on rockin’, Lady.

Thanks for coming along. 🙂

Comments : 12 Comments »

Categories : Advocacy, Autumn, Benchmark Lookout, Brumley Point, Colorado, Cottonwood trees, Disappointment Creek, Disappointment Valley, La Sal Mountains, McKenna Peak, McKenna Peak Wilderness Study Area, Rain, Rainbow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Spring Creek canyon, Sunset, Temple Butte, Water, Water catchment

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

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?

Little friend

1 09 2026

Merlin couldn’t identify the teeny little bird, but it might be some kind of sparrow (if you know, let me know!). It’s standing at the top of the “critter ladder” at the end of a water-catchment trough. It first looked at the water from the other end of the trough, then across from the horses, then fluttered over to this end and disappeared. Although I couldn’t see it from my distance away, I knew it was getting to the water level from the specifically placed critter ladder (it’s really more like a ramp with a sort of mesh over it for little toes to grip).

Is that awesome, or is that awesome?! 🙂

Comments : 10 Comments »

Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Water catchment, Wild birds

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

Rain’s a’comin’!

29 07 2026

Apologies for the late post this morning; last night’s storms took out my electricity! Very glad of the rain … shown above making its way into Disappointment Valley southeast of southeastern Spring Creek Basin. Seneca really didn’t think she wanted to help show off the view and the rain, but she did an amazing job of it, of course. 🙂

The great thing about the rain is that it wasn’t even in the forecast, so it was a *very* pleasant (understatement) surprise!

Comments : 8 Comments »

Categories : Brumley Point, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Rain, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte, The Glade, Water catchment

High on a creek full of water

14 08 2024

Hold onto your paddles, folks, have I got some rainwater for you. 🙂

Brought to you courtesy of Mother Nature –> Southwest Colorado –> Disappointment Valley –> Spring Creek Basin:

A full water-catchment trough is always a good sign. Fortunately, though low (in the tank, uphill behind me), we’ve had enough rain lately to keep this trough full – and there have been a fair number of horses drinking here with the amazing grass around (don’t let the pic fool you; the galleta, in particular, is bonkers this year, along with the alkali sacaton). I may have explained this in the past, but it bears repeating: The triangular sheet of metal over the trough is an evaporation cover, designed to help slow evaporation of precious water in our (usually) dry climate. The shape of the cover is triangular so the horses have plenty of room to drink at the sides of the round trough.

The Flat Top pond looks small in this wide-angle view looking eastish across Spring Creek Basin, but although it has gotten pretty shallow in recent years, it’s a pretty good size.

Good thing I scouted the V-arroyo before I tried to cross it. Those are my tentative footprints in the pillowy, shoe-grabbing – and tire-stopping – mud in the center bottom of the pic. You might not think it’s too bad, but there’s a lot of water in/under that surface mud still, and it is NOT friendly to tires or shoes until it has a chance to seep deeper into the soil and dry out from the bottom up. Along the left side of the pic is the arroyo – we’re looking upstream. The bottom of the arroyo, where I’m standing on relatively firm ground, isn’t very wide (hence my name of the “V”-arroyo), and the road rises to my left – up a little water-carved bank that’s nothing like the wall still in place on the other side of the first Spring Creek crossing.

Holy Spring, err, RIVER! I know it’s hard to tell, but this is the first crossing of the usually-dry arroyo that is Spring Creek (when it’s not masquerading as a rainwater-swollen river). Yes, the other side is a road. 🙂 Well, it’s mostly a two-tiered wall; the right side of it is where I dug a channel in the wall the last time the creek ran (back in June) so I could get my ATV across and up and over. It has been widened by crazy people in a truck (I don’t know who … I don’t know anyone that silly/stupid/nutso), but it’s greatly eroded again and is going to need some custom shovel work. (And lowering of the water level. :)) The width here is probably about 25 yards? (Good darting distance.) And this water level is at least 4-5 feet below where it was at its highest/widest mark, behind me, so it’s already running with less volume than at its peak. (WoW!)

I took a lot of pix from here, and I wish I knew how to embed video; I’m still on a super-high from seeing all that water. Bear with me as I show you some upstream and downstream and high-vantage pix. (If you don’t think water in the desert is A BIG DEAL, you don’t live in a desert.)

Looking downstream. Note the two-tiered wall across the creek where the road is (should be). Most of the rocks at left are from previous flooding. But I will tell you, that kind of water can move BIG rocks. I have seen it, and I have moved big (enough) rocks out of the way of crossing in a vehicle or ATV. This is why the powers that be warn people against crossing flooded roads; that water literally grooves arroyos into our salt-desert landscape (milennia ago, this was under a giant ocean!).

Arroyo as defined by Merriam Webster: plural arroyos. 1. : a waterway (as a creek) in a dry region. 2. : an often dry gully or channel carved by water.). … Arroyos are a desert’s proof of water movement – that far bank/wall is much taller than I am. The wall where the road used to be is proof that they’re always changing – with more water.

Looking upstream. Note the water at far right; it was still finding ways to trickle along downstream.

A bit wider view from back up the road a bit. I mean … ?! 🙂 I knew, before ever I got there, that I wouldn’t be able to cross, but I did NOT know how river-esque Spring Creek would be. I love, love, love this place.

Similar view, but this shows the bend in the creek at right. … Try to follow me upstream: See McKenna Peak (the pyramid-shaped pointy peak)? Way back there is the source/start of Spring Creek, which – as you all know, being loyal, wonderful readers of this blog – drains Spring Creek BASIN (along with all its multitude of widely (and narrowly) and wildly variable tributary arroyos). As you may or may not know, the creek doesn’t roll in a straight line from there to here (or beyond/behind/downstream of me). So that bend goes around to the left – upstream of the southernmost *major* drainage/arroyo in the basin – and past another creek/arroyo crossing (below the dugout, if you’ve visited). It comes from the eastish side of the basin – with the northernmost *major* drainage/arroyo entering from the northish to also run back to (really from) the northeast. Are you still with me? There are three *major* drainages in Spring Creek Basin with Spring Creek being the lowest, middle drainage – named as the very-most-major drainage and namesake of the basin it drains.

Water is important here. Knowing how it flows is part of the importance. Back in the very-long-ago day, some other silly people – who apparently didn’t know about arroyos and the highly-erodable quality of the salt-desert soil – tried to dam Spring Creek just below the confluence of the third major arroyo. Thinking they would create a reservoir out of which to irrigate land for farming (what WERE they thinking?), they built a dam and dredged miles of irrigation ditch; the remains of both can still be seen. As the story goes, the first major rain of the (likely monsoon?) season brought water rolling like a river down every tiny arroyo, down to and through the big drainages, blasted a hole in the dam that likely had cost boatloads of blood and sweat and resulted in tears (!) … and they went away *disappointed* (har har). … Mother Nature always wins, folks.

Well, I knew better than to attempt the crossing of Spring Creek Basin’s *river* (without more rain … which we’re getting again as I type … the creek would likely be done flowing within 24 hours … though the water will last in pockets and seeps for a good long while), so despite the big group of a couple of bands of mustangs not far away, I headed out, already on a great big, marvelous high.

What you’re looking at in the pic above is our crazy-good grass, which amazes me because of the little – but always valuable – rain we’ve gotten this summer (this year, really; it’s been pretty darn dry since *last* year). The galleta grass is particularly bonkers this year, along with the sand dropseed and/or alkali sacaton (very similar in appearance). This is from right inside the basin’s main/western boundary entrance looking eastish.

From here, my next destination was the south rim of Spring Creek canyon, through which water runs out of Spring Creek Basin, out across lower Disappointment Valley and into Disappointment Creek, which delivers water – along with a “healthy” (aka large) dose of salt and sediment (apologies) – to the grand and spectacular Dolores River.

Spring Creek, draining Spring Creek Basin. 🙂 Around the near (left) bend, before the far bend, there’s a fence across the wide-open low ground and a water gap across the creek; that’s the basin’s western boundary. Way yonder, on the horizon, on the far side of the farthest rimrock and even beyond that blue-grey tide of rain, is the south shoulder of eastern Utah’s La Sal Mountains.

Not even my phone’s widest angle is wide enough to take in all the gorgeousity of Spring Creek through its canyon, so here’s another bit of view that takes in more of the upstream canyon area. Spring Creek Basin stretches north (straight ahead of me) and east (to my right) and south (behind me) from this perspective on the canyon’s south rim.

Those layers. The canyon is neither super deep nor particularly long. But it is so gorgeous.

In just the short time I walked out and spent along the rim, the storm to the west was already passing.

Looking upstream across the heart of Spring Creek Basin, where another storm loomed on the northeastern/eastern/southeastern horizon.

And because this is a blog about the wild horses of Spring Creek Basin, there IS a mustang out there, though I’m not sure he’s visible. As far as I know, the young mister is the only one to have crossed the creek (within view, anyway). 🙂

Grow, grass, grow!

Better late than never (this was the last day of specific rain in the forecast). I think we can be said to have gotten some monsoon rains this summer. Despite all the worry leading to this day (yesterday), soooo amazingly grateful. 🙂

* Thanks to Charley Pride for the inspiration behind this post’s title – “(High on a) Mountain of Love.”

Comments : 14 Comments »

Categories : Brumley Point, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, La Sal Mountains, McKenna Peak, Ponds, Rain, Spring Creek, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Spring Creek canyon, Temple Butte, Water, Water catchment

Critter ladder in use

29 07 2024

I *think* that’s a male brown-headed cowbird in the center, possibly flanked by females or juveniles. Please DO correct me if you know the correct ID. Birds – especially LBJs – aren’t even on my list of known-about critters.

Speaking of critters, they’re on the “critter ladder” in the trough at the main/original water catchment in Spring Creek Basin, built 20-plus years ago. The “ladder” is a bit of metal mesh that allows birds, ground squirrels – critters – to get to the water to drink without drowning. I was super tickled to see them using it with horses (that’s Tenaz in the background) napping around it after an evening mosey to the water cooler, err, trough. (All of the troughs at all four water catchments in the basin have some form of critter ladder.)

Fun bonus pic of the male actually standing on the rim of the trough as photographed through the legs of a napping mustang. 🙂

Everything in the wild needs water. Mother Nature could be a little (!) more helpful in the delivery of said water, but we do our best to ensure that it gets where it needs to go.

Comments : 10 Comments »

Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Water, Water catchment, Wild birds

Gathered at the cooler water

11 08 2023

A lot of the horses, I see a lot of the time when I visit Spring Creek Basin. Some of the horses, I see some of the time, and a couple of bands, I see rarely. This year, with the new catchments, and horses having found both and using/drinking at both, I do now see a lot of the horses a lot of the time!

But until recently, a couple-few of the bands had become a little elusive, even bands that I had otherwise seen literally every single time I went out. It occurred to me that those bands had found and were using the catchment in the northwest valley – last year’s new catchment – but I rarely drive into that part of the basin (the road is pretty rough), and every time I glassed that area, I saw neither hide nor hair of them.

That changed recently.

I decided to just drive back there and have a look around. At the least, thought I, I’d see hoofprints around the trough.

Oh, ho! From a distance, with the binoculars, I finally saw them up in the northwest valley … and when I arrived, sure enough, there were the “elusive” ones, all there to greet me.

When they decided it was drink time (it was, in fact, well after 5 o’clock there …!), I followed along as they all moseyed to the trough, then waited with them while one band drank, then another … and another … followed by the low-pony bachelors.

These two little sweethearts are youngsters, and though they initially got chased away when, with all the innocence of youth, they preceded their band and tried to drink while another band was at the trough, they did very soon after that get their fill of the lovely clear, clean water.

And mama Winona, too.

I took pix with my phone and texted Mike (Jensen, our herd manager) and told him (again) how sincerely grateful I am to him for having the foresight to take these water catchments from vision to reality. He replied with a characteristically low-key thumbs-up emoji. 🙂

These water catchments (we have four now in the basin, with storage capacity of 50,500 gallons) are game-changers for us. They are the absolute difference between our horses sipping from muddy seeps (only one pond still has water currently) and being able to actually slake their thirst during 90-plus-degree days with humidity in the single digits.

Grateful????? Multiply that by a gajillion, and that’s still not enough. Super, super grateful. 🙂

In case you missed the posts about our water-catchment-building projects the last two years, check out these posts (wow, I didn’t realize I’d done so many until I listed them here (please excuse the randomness of changing styles?!)) … but the *WORK* was, has been and continues to be amazing, for which we are eternally grateful!):

Wildcat valley, 2021

Teamwork

Water catchment: phase 1, day 1

Water catchment: phase 1, day 2

Water catchment: phase 1, day 3

Water catchment: phase 1, day 4

Water catchment: phase 2, day 1

Water catchment: phase 2, day 2

Water catchment: phase 3 (teaser)

Water catchment: phase 3

Water catchment: phase 4

Water catchment: phase 4.5