Wild Horses

This last week, we made one more trip to the BLM lands around Canyonlands Maze district.  On our way in, just past Sweetwater Reef, we were greeted by these guys:

We knew a wild horse herd was in the area.  They're called the Robber's Roost herd. 

The curious youngsters went up to the horse trailer and looked inside, probably exchanging eager nickers with our guys.

This little filly turned up late.  She must have been caught napping, or rolling in the sand, or la-di-da-ing. 

Noticing she was left alone, she was in a big hurry to catch up with the group. 
Since the wild ones didn't seem afraid, at first we thought they might be ranch horses. The gray latecomer has a mark on her right shoulder in the photo above, but on magnification this appears to be a scar, not a brand.  With no brands and no shoes, we're assuming they were mustangs, about a dozen of them altogether.  Some may have been running through the sand dunes alongside the road and we wouldn't have seen them.

Isn't this black mare a beauty?

I love her long, flowing mane and tail.

In looking up information on the Robber's Roost herd, I found that the BLM limits the herd number to about 25. (Any increase in size results in a roundup, usually every couple of years.  The excess animals are offered for adoption through the BLM Horse and Burro Adoption Program.)  The Robber's Roost herd members are predominately gray, black and roan.  The small size and the general conformation of the group we saw was typical of mustangs.  According to the BLM site, mustangs have been in the area since the early 1800's, with the occasional ranch horse joining the wild ones and diluting the original Spanish barb genetics.

A few minutes after the horses passed us going the opposite direction along the road, we saw a helicopter.  We assume it was a BLM employee, flying low, checking population numbers or herd condition, and that may have sent the horses running along the road and into our path. 
We felt lucky to have seen them.

Cold Spring Mustangs

Several of you asked about sightings of wild horses on Wild Horse Bench.  We didn't see any there, but we saw the mustang herd pictured above in 2005, on the other side of the Green River in the Book Cliffs (about 20 miles distant, as the crow flies).  We reached Cold Springs by driving through Nine Mile Canyon to Cottonwood Canyon, then traveling some obscure dirt roads to a plateau. 

We hiked to the spring and saw the horses as we were returning to our truck.  Their curiosity held them long enough for a couple of photos before they took off. 

Here is a map of the Cold Springs, Utah, area, which was recently acquired by the Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR):

It's remote and beautiful wild country.  Definitely worth the trip.