Riding the High Owyhee Country

Friday August 12 2011

Steph has toyed with the idea of a Silver City Ghost Town endurance ride. We've tinkered with the idea of riding from home up to Silver City (the base of the mountains are roughly 6 miles away), spending the night in the old historic Idaho Hotel (established 1863), and riding back home the next day. We just have to find a good route up the mountain - and we keep chipping away at little pieces of it.

Hauling up into the Owyhees today, our goal was to retrace some of our hoofprints from last year in a quest for a loop on top - but without getting semi-lost like we did with Dudley.

Karen was going to bring maps, but she didn't - nor did I - but Karen was pretty sure she knew the correct road to take this time... and if we did get lost, I wasn't worried this time because I was on Jose, a fit horse with tough feet (and Easyboot gloves). And I carried a GPS, a jacket, and food and water and gatorade, and horse treats, for a long day.

Regina wasn't sure her rig would make it up the steepest part of the grade to Silver City carrying 4 horses - so we stopped at the beginning of the steep climb, in the middle of the road (no traffic), and Karen and I unloaded Rusty and Jose, and we hopped on them and trotted them a mile up the road after the horse trailer.

Regina waited for us after the steep climb and we loaded back up in the rig for the rest of the drive up the mountain, to the corrals around the corner from historic Silver City, the living mining ghost town.


The four of us headed up the War Eagle road, past the Fairview Cemetery (established 1873),


past the site of the old town of Fairview, (burned completely down in 1875; a few foundations remain among the sagebrush),


past the old mine shafts and tailings of the Poorman mine (started in 1865, one of the richest bodies of ore for its size ever discovered - 500 pounds of ruby silver were removed from the mine in one piece of ore - this piece was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1867),

below a soaring immature golden eagle and the red cliffs,


up onto Burnam Flats!


Jose had never been up here before. He was agog at the views.


We could see home from up here - or at least where our 2 creeks converge, under the green dot of trees.


We also found a different road down off the mountain... which possibly meets up with the Silver City road, and which possibly meets up with Gerty Creek, which joins with Sinker Creek, which is easy access from our place...

After a good snack on the abundant grass left by the cows still hanging out on the mountain, we moved on into the Pickett Creek drainage and its 'headwaters' - up here, myriad little steep drainages that create Pickett Creek,


and the one flowing year-round spring that Jose drank deeply from.


Another 2 miles brought us through the jungle of aspens to the Pickett Creek saddle, to the other side of the mountain.


We skirted the base of Hayden Peak (highest in the Owyhees at 8403'),


and this time, instead of following what we thought last year was the obvious road (and this was the area of the missing map), this time we turned onto a road with a locked gate, which crawled up the side of Hayden Peak. We'd gotten permission from the local rancher to ride this road, so up the side of the mountain we climbed.


The views opened up below us - we could see the logging road we'd taken last year in error, that petered out on top of a peak and ended far away from War Eagle mountain.


Jose couldn't get enough of the views as we climbed to almost 8000'.


Still on the main jeep road, we eventually descended to the saddle between War Eagle and Hayden Peaks - much easier than our scramble last year. The breeze was delightfully cool (the exciting harbinger of an early fall!?) and Ravens drifted and tumbled above us.


We dropped down to the main jeep road and rode the several miles back to the trailer - an easy 22-mile round trip (5 1/2 hours).

Jose drank his fill at a creek before we loaded back up to drive off the mountain - and we humans stopped for a Murphy burger (!!) on the way home.


We were already scheming our next ride in the Owyhees. Now, about that Silver City Ghost Town endurance ride...

[slide show here]

Burnam Flat Tastes Good!

Monday July 20 2010

An epic adventure for Dudley in the Owyhee Mountains.

We hauled up to Silver City - a narrow, twisting, unpaved road up into the Owyhee mountains, to try to find a way to ride to Burnam Flat from up top. We'd tried from the bottom but couldn't find a way up there. You get out onto these old mining roads, and you never quite know if the road you're following is on the map, or if the map says there is a road when it no longer exists.

The trail was beautiful, historic. Past old mines, some restored old shacks/mills/now houses

(I believe there's an ordinance in Silver City and the surrounding area that you have to rebuild to the way the buildings were in the gold and silver rush days), past old mines

some with the rails still running into them and streams running out of them, past Fairview Cemetery (established 1875)(and with a very fine view to the Snake River drainage some 4000 feet below),

through cool and shady sweet-smelling fir forests, through hot mountain mahogany forests, through thick miniature aspen forests,

past red palisades

and mountain meadows,

across the springs that are the headwaters of the creeks we ride down on the desert flats. Sometimes I would cup my hands to make a little dam in a flowing spring so Dudley could get a drink.


It was a lot of walking, a lot of climbing for a fat boy like Dudley, but he willingly went along, ears pricked forward, looking for that Burnam Flat Meadow I'd promised him a picnic in.

And after 7 1/2 miles, we reached it from the road we were on, and Dudley had the best picnic he'd ever had. We called Steph on a cell phone, "Hey Steph! If you look out your window right now, you'll see us waving at you from Burnam Flat!" (Of course she would have needed a telescope.)


Instead of backtracking we decided to make a loop out of it - new territory for all of us. We had a map that covered most of the route.

It was that missing part of the map that we really could have used... and then it might not have helped us at all (see paragraph 1).

Over the Pickett Creek saddle

(that's the creek I live on, way down there!) and onto the backside of the Cinnabar Mountain, we followed a main old logging road (the one on the map), skirting the base of Cinnabar,

crossing the wide creekbed of Lightning Creek Spring (which is at times a huge runoff),

and a climb up the other side,

heading for a pass on Cinnabar somewhere.

We thought.

Somehow, this main dirt road becoming more of a... fading logging road, and we found ourselves heading the opposite way of where we should be going, and back down, after that hard-fought gain to 7,000 feet. And this is about where we were off the map.

14 miles now, and Dudley was working hard (even at a walk, but the fat boy hasn't done a whole lot). And then the road went up even more, a steep climb. I got off to lead Dudley - till I couldn't do it anymore. The horses all huffed and puffed and dug in and got to the top... and the road quit.

15 miles, and now a canyon between us and the ridge we should have been heading for. What now? Retrace our steps 15 miles (making a 30 mile trip... and mostly walking...) or try to bushwhack further up, then down (hoping it wasn't an impassible canyon) and up another steep climb to gain the Cinnabar ridge... and hope there wasn't a steep drop-off on the other side so we'd then have to retrace 17 miles...

I was feeling bad for Dudley. We hadn't planned on 20 miles, and certainly not this much climbing. He was pooped (though that didn't stop him from eating) and his feet were getting tender. He's barefoot and it's the first time he's done any more than 5 miles in the Easyboot gloves. And the fat boy was just tired.

Well, we went for the cross country scramble.


Fortunately we didn't have a deep canyon to cross, and though the climb was steep, it wasn't too bad, and we took our time and when we got to the top... we hit a road! At 7800 feet. We were between War Eagle Peak and Hayden Peak (8403', highest in the Owyhees)

- the highest Dudley had ever been, and ever wants to go. Burnam Flat was a great distant memory. We were even above the last remaining big snow patch in the Owyhees.


But a beautiful sight (besides the beautiful views that we'd had all day) was another small meadow as we descended by road off the Cinnabar ridge. Our horses dove into the grass... and soon the long hard trek was a distant memory.


We still had several miles to get back to our trailers, but we hit the road we were looking for, successfully making a loop (though it wasn't quite the one we'd intended), and it was mostly flat or downhill from there.

Dudley looked bright eyed this morning... and a bit slimmer. I see his hipbones starting to take shape again.
By the end, we'd done about 24 miles in 8 1/2 hours. I was pretty proud of Dudley. He just completed his first Bushwhackin' Owyhee Tevis ride.