Living on Wildflowers

We rode to the top of Lake Mountain yesterday.  Wildflowers were out all along the way. 

A red-tailed bumblebee, Bombus ternarius, fed on a mountain dandelion.

This less colorful bumblebee preferred the golden pea blooms. 

Do you see something unusual on this iris? Steve did, enough to dismount and take a second look.

On closer inspection, you can observe this goldenrod crab spider Misumena vatia, eating a wasp.  Look closer still.  Do you see the baby spider to the right?  It's getting a survival lesson from mom.  I hope it's taking notes. These spiders can be either yellow or white, changing color over a couple of weeks by secreting or excreting yellow pigment. They don't build webs, but hide and ambush their prey.

A rocky mountain parnassian perches on a dandelion. 

This western swallowtail checks out the iris nectar. 

Across Gull Lake, an elk was wading in the water.  When we rode within about 500 yards, it splashed out of the water, leaving a visible wake, and disappeared into the aspen forest. 

Back at the trailer, a trusting Daisy enjoys Boss's shade.   Boss usually moves along when grazing, but with Daisy there, he didn't take a single step.  He seemed to know she was there and stood protectively over her.

Marmot on the Rocks

We heard this little fellow whistling at us from his safe haven on a rocky slope.  (A loud whistle is the marmot alarm call.) He had a handy hole to dive into, so he wasn't too worried about Daisy.

He's a yellow-bellied marmot.  We saw several of them as we hiked along at about 9500 feet.  Isn't he cute?

The 18-26 inch long Marmots inhabit burrows on rocky slopes on sides of mountain or a meadows. They live from 3 to 20 years eating forbs, clovers, alfalfa, grasses and occasionally insects. Foxes, badgers, bears, Eagles, and mountain lions prey on them.  http://www.wildutah.us/ 

Elk Surprise

We hiked in the Whiterocks River drainage of the southern Uintas yesterday. At noon, the skies were clear blue. Dark clouds gathered in the early afternoon, though.  We waited out a short rain/sleet/snow storm, then walked out of the woods (elevation about 10,700 feet) and found a herd of elk lounging at the edge of the meadow. 

They were just as surprised as we were.  The calves, who had been napping, hastily got to their feet,

ran to their mommas,

and the whole group bunched up and stared at us for a moment before bustling off into the trees. The elk at the far left of the above photo appears to be a bull. Do you agree?  He seems to have short spikes for antlers.  He would have shed his antlers in late winter.  Don't know why he hasn't grown more of a rack by now.

The wind was blowing into our faces, so they didn't smell us ahead of time.  Daisy smelled them, but she was so busy running around sniffing the abundant scent that she didn't seem to realize where the elk actually were.
We were glad she didn't chase them and spoil our excellent photo op!

Christmas Treat

Since we've lived in Utah, one of our family traditions has been to trek out into the national forest to find a Christmas tree. 

Some years, the snow is deep, but not this year.  It was easy to get to 9500 feet by road.

After a short hike and some searching, we found a pretty little tree.

Here it is, all dressed up.  We have our Christmas "treat", as my daughter used to call the tree when she was little.

P.S.  We had snow over the weekend!  

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The Eagle Has Flown

On a drive into the mountains this week, Steve noticed a large bird perched in an aspen.

I got out to sneak closer for a photograph, but it flew before I got very far.  It was a huge bird with a white tail.  Its head also appeared to be white. 

A bald eagle?  If so, it must have been migrating south, because it wasn't close to any body of water at that point.  Many bald eagles congregate along the Green River in the winter.  Perhaps that was its destination. 

Wherever it was headed, this bird certainly looked majestic as it flew over the mountainous landscape.

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My Heroes Have Always Been...

You've got it, Willie. Cowboys. (You know the old Willie Nelson tune, don't you?)
Lo and behold, last weekend we found ourselves out in the Paradise Park high country of the Uintas, riding with a couple of cowboys. Okay, they were really a pharmacist and a horse trainer, but they had cowboy hats. And chaps. And fine, fit horses. They looked the part. Above, Steve and the almost-cowboys are chilling around Fish Lake. (Original name, isn't it? Every drainage in the Uintas seems to have a Fish Lake.)

To get there, we crossed Dry Fork:
Not dry here, though. In its lower reaches, the water drops into sinks and travels below ground. Thus, the name Dry Fork.

The stream would be easily fordable on horseback in August, but it might be a "biting dog," as they say, in spring runoff. The Forest Service kindly built a bridge to make crossing easy any time of year.

Here, the "cowboys" explore the shore of Twin Lakes:

We saw a number of beautiful lakes and ponds, and rode through scenic open meadows.One of our friends' horses decided to put on a bucking display while going through a bog. Fortunately, the rider kept his seat, and all was well.
Here's Steve in Lightning Park. The place is aptly named, to judge by the tree on which the sign is nailed. The tree is dead and looks as if it were the victim of heaven-sent electricity.
Our last stop was in Blanchett Park, through which a docile Dry Fork meanders.
Over 2 days, we covered close to 25 miles. One of the guys is an expert at Dutch Oven cooking - if he'd been the cook on one of the 1880's cattle drives, the cowboys would have refused to go home. We neglected to take a photo of the feast, probably because we were too busy stuffing ourselves.
We ate like royalty. Too much more of that, and I'd have to be hoisted onto Mischief with a crane!

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Berries Galore

This morning, Steve and I rode from the Paradise Park Rd. forest service boundary, up to Gull Lake, then down to Bear Wallow Spring on the trail leading toward Massey Ranch. That trail had been blocked by blowdown in June, but someone has been in there with a chain saw, clearing things out. We saw cows hanging out in the aspens near Gull Lake and sign of cows all the way down to Bear Springs. At the spring, Daisy had fun getting filthy in the mud, and Boss tried his best to roll in a cow wallow. Fortunately, Steve stopped him in time.
On the way out, we met the same older man from the LaPoint area we’d met near Gull Lake a year ago last spring. He rides one horse and brings along another so as to exercise both at once. Last time we noted that he was “packing”. Couldn’t tell for sure this time.





All along the creek on the way down, we saw lots and lots of berries coming on: chokecherry, serviceberry, wax currant. Every bush was loaded. Besides the lupine I’d seen on the ride with Denise, I noticed harebells, penstemon, and purple asters.
We made the entire ride barefoot. The horses did great, although they were a little slower than usual on the downhill. Back at the trailhead, there were a total of five trailers. One old cowboy stopped to chat, asking how our “little ride” went. He said he’d been checking troughs on the “other side” and wondered who was around checking troughs on this side. Steve said all of our troughs and cows looked fine. Don’t know what the old man made of that. The cowboy had no front teeth to speak of, and had an Australian shepherd with him that he called “Brown Dog”. Simple and descriptive.
We returned to the trailer about 1:30PM. Thunderstorms were predicted for the afternoon, but so far the sky didn’t look too bad. By the time we returned home, dark clouds were building. We were glad our ride didn't get drowned out, but we are hoping for a little rain around Roosevelt.
Today’s ride: 8 miles, 1900 feet elevation gain, done in about 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Disoriented, Not Lost

My friend Denise and I went on a grand adventure today. We trailered our horses from our separate directions (Vernal for her, Roosevelt for me) and met at the trailhead to Lake Mountain located off of the Paradise Park Road.
We did fine getting up there, well, if you don’t count my missing the Y turn that went in the Paradise Park direction and taking a little tour down Deep Creek Road. As soon as I realized nothing looked familiar and I wasn’t going toward the mountains any more, I turned around, went back to the Y, and continued to the trailhead. Even with the detour, I still reached the destination in about an hour total driving time. I beat Denise there by about 10 minutes. She called my cell phone from the Deep Creek/Paradise Park Y, also confused about the turn. Lucky for her, I knew the spot and prevented her from making my same mistake.
There was one more snafu. Denise didn’t have the key to her trailer tack room, so she couldn’t get to her saddle or bridle. Whoops. However, she was able to use Steve’s gear, so that problem was solved pretty easily.
Denise’s horse, Wystyrea, a beautiful rose grey Arab, has only been ridden for a couple of months. Even as a greenhorn, she’s a real sweetheart. No problems there. Mischief was way mellow, even more than usual, after the 30 miles he did last weekend. Thus, no one was jobbed in the dirt, always a big plus.
The wildflowers were predominantly lupine with some Indian paintrbrush at the trailhead. Wild roses bloomed along the creek. When we reached the top of the mountain, we found that Gull Lake was no longer a lake. There were a few ponds in the lake bed, but for the most part it was a vast green sedge meadow, probably marshy in the center. We didn’t see any elk or moose, and scared up only one deer.
We trotted around the lake. According to the GPS, our max speed was a respectable 9 mph. Since Denise and I were of differing opinion about where the Massey Ranch trail reached the top of Lake Mountain, we rode around a bit until we found it. We agreed that next time we’d use Marsh Peak to indicate the correct side of the lake.
I knew the approximate location of the path back to our trailer, but we had a little trouble locating the fence gap. Three riders were up there checking fences, and they pointed out where to look. I’m sure they spent the rest of their day chuckling over the two women trying to follow a GPS trackback instead of actually paying attention to landmarks. Oh, well.
This is reminiscent of other times I’ve gotten lost … er, disoriented. Tess and I took a walk around a Laundromat down in Florida, intending to circle the block and ending up on a couple of mile trek. Uhm, I think we forgot to pay attention. Likewise, on the same trip, we hunted around the airport parking lot at midnight in an attempt to find our truck. Tess was convinced the truck had been stolen, but it turned up, eventually, right where we’d parked it. And then there was the hike with my friend Kathleen to Cecret Lake, one of the most traveled and popular hiking destinations in Utah (part of the famed Albion Basin area near Alta) Well, we got to talking, took a wrong turn, and couldn’t find the lake! Oops.
Anyway, back to the Lake Mountain ride. None the worse for wear, two directionally challenged women (and their trusty mounts) returned home. And yeah, all the squiggly lines and loopy loops on my downloaded trackback map are a little embarrassing…
According to my GPS, we traveled 8 miles, 1400 feet elevation gain, in 2.5 hrs.

Heaven's Gate

Over the weekend we took a little trip to Paradise… Park, that is. Just before reaching the Paradise Park Reservoir, we turned right on a dirt road (unmarked) that leads to the Dry Fork Creek horse bridge. We were looking for a place to pull over and camp with the pickup and horse trailer.
We found our spot near a marshy area with good grass with an old road leading to a flat meadow where we thought we could set up overnight shop. The old road had a lot of branches and fallen trees in the way, all of small diameter, but making the track impassable without some work. Luckily, Steve had his trusty chain saw that even had some gas in it. He cut a path barely wide enough for the truck and trailer.
Creating the entry made for a lot of work, what with the cutting and hauling aside the branches and trunks. Even then, the passage of our rig was … interesting. Once inside the meadow, we had an ideal, very private location. An old rock campfire ring (and of course some old cans and bottles) indicated the place had been used a few times by hunters or campers.
With the campground established, we headed out about noon on Saturday for our first day’s ride. The plan was to go to Big Park, near Marsh Peak. We’ve been there several times, approaching from the Red Cloud Loop side, from the Marsh Bench road or from Massey Ranch/Horsehoe Park. We’ve seen a huge herd of Elk in Big Park. The area is wide open and beautiful in mid-summer. This time, though, we didn’t quite have our trails straight.
We went down the road from our camp, crossed the Dry Fork Creek bridge, and followed the signs and markers past Burro Park, Hells Kitchen Park, and entering Corral Park. From there, we hoped to find a trail through the woods to Big Park but we weren’t able to locate the trail marked on our Topo! Maps. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a forest service map, or we would have had a better idea where to go. We could have followed Corral Park on around to Big Park, but we ran out of exploration time. As it was, we returned to the trailer about 8PM.
The ride was 12 miles, 1600 feet elevation gain, accomplished in about 6 hours. Our travel was a little slower than usual because the trail was rocky and we had to go around or over a lot of blowdown in the spruce and lodgepole forest. Above 10,000 feet, we ran into a few patches of snow. Dandelions and buttercups were out.
Overall, the route was well-watered, a good place to spend a day that topped 90 degrees in Roosevelt, but was only in the high sixties where we were, above 9500 feet.
The mosquitoes were pretty bad back at the camp, but Wipe-On fly spray worked well on the horses. Daisy found herself a nice cow femur to chew on. We called it her Daisy Binky.
We were glad to have our cozy gooseneck trailer with mattress in the nose to sleep on. One mosquito was buzzing around inside at first, but Steve managed to zap it pretty quickly.
On Sunday, the goal was to reach Twin Lakes. We drove the truck and trailer out of our campsite and continued about 2 miles toward the bridge, where we parked in an open place beside the road. From there, we saddled up and took off. The trail was the same as the previous day until a mile or so past the bridge. From there, we diverged onto the marked Twin Lakes trail.
We stopped to eat lunch at a widened part of Dry Fork. Daisy had a great time diving into the water to fetch sticks. We rode on to Twin Lakes, where we saw a group of campers in a wall tent with their horses. We had seen their horse trailers not far from where we parked and thought we might run into them. Daisy ran over to play with their dogs. We managed to get her to come back without too much trouble. We crossed the lake outlet in water that was horse belly deep with no problem, thinking the trail ran on the other side of the lake.
After much searching around, we never came up on a real trail, but we did manage to follow enough of a game trail to view both lakes. (Later, at home, we consulted the forest service map and found that we should have stayed on the same side of the lake as the campers. Next time, that map comes with us in the saddlebags!)

Just before we turned around, we found a huge snowbank where Daisy had fun glissading down the snow. That was at about 10, 200 feet. Around the lake, marsh marigolds were everywhere in the wet areas.
The entire ride was only about 6.5 miles with 1200 feet elevation gain. We made the ride in about 4.5 hours. Not bad considering the time we spent looking for trails in rough country, and the rocky trails in general.
Conclusions: Never go anywhere in the Uintas without forest service map in addition to Topo! Maps. Bring plenty of bug spray. A return to the area in August would be good. The wildflowers will be numerous and beautiful then.

Sunrays and Wind

We didn’t want to turn lazing around into an art form(as if Steve would ever let me get away with that!), so we were back into activities again today. We took horses and Daisy up to the trailhead off the Paradise Park road just past the forest service boundary. Because of rain yesterday, the trails were wet, so we used the unpaved Paradise Park road instead of a trail. No traffic to speak of. We passed one truck coming up as we were going back down. The weather held out in spite of dire NOAA predictions. The wind did pick up considerably in the afternoon, however, which urged us to opt for a “shortcut” (maybe only 20% longer?) through the aspens back to the trailer. We both wore our Aussie dusters and stayed warm enough at about 50 degrees and windy. We trotted most of the way up, gaining about 1400 feet, 8 miles, in 2 hours and fifteen minutes.
We rode the horses without boots. Steve has been reading about healthy Mustang hooves, and we’re seeing if our horses hoof shapes will change with more barefoot riding. Unfortunately, both horses seemed pretty footsore, especially on the way down. The road was mostly soft due to muddy conditions, but there were quite a few rocks. I think next time I’m using my Easy boot Bares. An occasional totally barefoot day is probably a good thing, though. Their feet will be tougher, which could save the day if we lost a boot unexpectedly.
The yellow Sunrays were out in force at the trailhead. No lupines up that high yet.