Wild Horse Spring

We thought we’d get in a good long ride yesterday since the weather was predicted to turn rainy and cold today.
Temperatures were nice, in the 50’s at 9000 plus feet, sunny, and not too windy.
Again, we traveled to our current favorite trailhead in Indian Canyon, saddled up, and rode 4 miles and 2000 feet to Gray Head Peak in a little over an hour. From there, we followed last week’s track to the Meadow Spring. Riding on past, we went another couple of miles to Wild Horse Spring. The cow trough there kind of belied the name "wild horse", but the water was nice.

Daisy even considered a swim, but decided against it. I think she was just too tired to climb in. She’d been racing around looking for rabbits and deer, in addition to keeping up with the horses fast pace.
Water in the shade was frozen, but in sun it was thawed out.
On the way back, we did a bit of burling through the forest:

Here’s a picture of a Douglas Fir we found on one of the ridges below Gray Head.
It’s stunted and twisted with lots of character. Looks pretty old.

Here's a view of Gray Head taken from the north side. You can see it's a pretty steep climb to get up there:

From near the top, we took a photo of the Avintaquin Creek valley below. We'll use the contours to help plan a ride into that area:

Almost back to the trailer, Daisy found a deer to chase. After that run, her tongue was really hanging out.
My GPS ran out of batteries, so I don’t have all of my usual statistics. The ride was about 19 miles, 5000 feet elevation gain and loss. From start to finish took about 6 hours.