Owyhee Outlaws

Wednesday June 24 2015

Call it the Pickett Crick Roost. The wily Owyhee Outlaw Bovines have been hiding out here for quite some time. Months, possibly, because it was a couple of months ago that Connie said she saw a few cows and calves up Pickett Crick. All the cows should be up near the mountains and a few drainages and several fences over by now.

I'd been up and down the canyon on horseback several times in the last month or two, and I never saw any cows. But just last week, Connie happened upon them in their hidey holes in Pickett Crick. "About 6 of them," she guessed.

We called the rancher, because it was too far for us to drive them onward, and we didn't know where they were supposed to be by now anyway. And they probably would have been a bit too wild for us.


Two of the rancher's boys arrived with a couple horses and dogs and a trailer; they'd herd the cows down to our place and into a round pen, then run them into the trailer.


It took a while for the boys to find and flush the cows and calves out of the crick, and to get them to agree to all head down the canyon. Turned out there were more like a dozen of them, with calves wilder'n snot, and some of the cows were a bit rank, too.


The boys and horses and dogs gently eased the cows down along fence lines toward the house and the round pen. A couple of wily calves tried to make a run for it, but the cow dogs took care of them. It was one of the cows that, when they got close, decided, nope, she was *not* going in that round pen, because she liked her Pickett Crick Roost just fine thankyouverymuch, and she busted loose and all hell with it, the herd scattering and stampeding back up-canyon.


Horses and dogs took off after them in a cloud of dust, and after some more wrangling (and setting up another panel that would angle the cows in the round pen gate), the boys and horses and dogs convinced the herd to squeeze into the round pen.


One cowboy rode back to fetch the trailer. He backed it up to the round pen, and got all but 4 calves on the trailer. It took 3 cowboys on foot, a couple of dogs, and a couple more fence panels to guide/squeeze those Owyhee Outlaw Calves into the trailer, and then off they headed to their new mountain hideout, to continue their wild and wily ways.

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...

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