Exploring Owyhee's Perjue Canyon

November 24 2018

This Owyhee sagebrush flat and canyon had just a bit of a…. cougar-y feel. Not an imminent we're-going-to-get-jumped-on feeling, but… thick brush along the crick, a single path along the bottom of the high-walled canyon, rock shelters and lairs and mini-caves above, the cool stillness of a fall day, pregnant with the feeling of possibility and opportunity springing forth.

And that was before, about 20 minutes into our ride, Karen said, "Did I tell you last time we came here to hike this trail I saw a cougar print?"

Dudley and I had hitched a ride with Leah and her mustang Bear, and Karen and her former endurance horse Rusty, to explore Perjue Canyon in the Little Jacks Creek Wilderness. Rusty charged eagerly ahead on the trail, unafraid of anything (his only nemesis is cows), and Bear followed, completely unflappable (I expect if he ran into a cougar, he'd Stink-eye it away), followed by Dudley. The Dude wasn't nervous, but one time in the canyon he did stop and whip his head around behind him and he studied the brush along the crick a while. Dudley always sees wildlife before I do so I always wait to see what he's spotted; this time he didn't actually see anything. But Dudley knew that here it didn't hurt to check. 

I wasn't nervous, but I've learned over the years, if it feels like cougar country, it is cougar country. Doesn't hurt to keep your eyes peeled at the brush, the rock outcroppings you're riding under, and glance behind you now and then. Cougars aren't particularly numerous out here, but they are here.

While the canyons in the Owyhee country don't have the flair and grandeur of Utah's red canyon country, ours can still be a little bit spectacular, much less traveled, and intriguing to explore, particularly on foot. If there aren't trails down in all of them, there are usually plenty of old two-track roads to get you cross-country and at least above those canyons.

Closer to the cities, the red rhyolite-walled Sinker Canyon can certainly be called spectacular; it's a popular place for ATVs (so if you're going horseback, you want to go mid-week, and preferably when schools are in session), and a side trip on your way to Silver City.

Perjue is further out - a good hour further out, on a good-but-washboard Mud Flat dirt road that is part of a scenic Owyhee Uplands Backcountry Byway over the Owyhee mountains that eventually dumps you out at Jordan Valley, Oregon.

The canyon is named after Frank Perjue, whose old cabin walls still stand near the approach to the canyon. He probably homesteaded cattle (or sheep?) here in the early 1900's, and it was probably his livestock that originally laid the trail that we rode on. Perjue Canyon follows the West Fork of Shoofly Creek.

The Little Jacks Creek Wilderness (over 50,000 acres) is 1 of the 6 wilderness areas in Owyhee County, designated in 2009. BLM, Idaho Trails Association and other volunteer groups worked on developing this trail in Perjue Canyon. It's an out-and-back trail 4 miles down the West Fork of the Shoofly Crick, where it ends at private property (we were hoping for an obvious loop trail, but nothing obvious appeared, but with more exploring, there might be options), and 4 miles back.

At places, cottonwoods crowd the trail, and thick quail bush clusters along the narrowing canyon. We were past the time of golden autumn leaves, but during the height of color, the cottonwoods along the crick must be stunning yellow, and the quail bush deep maroon. And, at the right time of year, you can see bighorn sheep in and above the canyon.

We had a bit of water in the crick that we crossed several times (ice, actually), but the brush looks thick enough that there may be some water puddles year round.

It's an easy day hike for Owyhee hikers (and a BLM picnic area and vault toilet is about a mile down the road), and an easy exploring ride for trail riders. There was enough up and down, and a bit of scrambling over shale at a few places, and long enough to make Dudley sweat, even in the cold, though as endurance riders we wouldn't have minded another 10 miles or so, for the long trailer ride we took to get there.

But it was another cool new checkmark I can put on my Owyhee country map, and Dudley had a good time and a good workout!

What's In A (Trail) Name? Part III

September 4 2018

Numerous trails were covered in Part I.

Even more numerous trails were covered in Part II.

Mankind has named roads and trails since the beginning of time, to indicate where you're coming from and where you're going to, and to give you a kind of invested ownership in a place. Same thing here in Owyhee with the trails we ride. Yet even more examples:

Dudley Antler Loop

So named because, you got it, Dudley found, you guessed it, a deer antler when we were bushwhacking around the hills and washes back here. Part of it is the start of Merri's Trail (in Part I), but instead of heading right for Hart Creek, you turn off left into a wash downhill, then loop around to another steep uphill wash, climb a hill and find your way back to Spring Ranch road. This 'find your way back' part was where Dudley found his deer antler, and we returned and rode it enough times it's now a nice trail. You make a loop out of it, returning up Blonde Cow Wash - either on the trail alongside the wash, or in the wash. It's a perfect 5.5 mile training loop that you can make a hard or easy ride out of, depending on how much of the sand you trot in.

The Plane Crash

OK, it's not really a plane crash site, but you might not know it for all the metal sheets and pieces scattered along this trail. 'Plane crash trail' sounds better and more entertaining and light-hearted (?) than 'You'll be riding along this trail where Some dumba$$e$ mistook this for an actual trash dump, and dumped loads of metal - washer, drier, god-knows-what-all that will never degrade in my desert, thanks a lot, jerkweeds.'

I tell whatever horse I'm riding that, I know, it looks like a plane crash, but it's really just trash, nobody was hurt, and there's nothing to worry about, so just keep trotting onward.

The Dead Car

Not sure what the story is behind this one… maybe long ago somebody ran out of gas way out here and had to crawl out for help, or maybe it was a romantic date gone awry, but it's a very old rusted car (from the 20's? 30's? 40's? 50's? I don't know my cars) that drove off a little hill and is now half buried in the desert sand. It sort of pops right up on you as you crest the hill, so be ready for your horse to spook!

Commando Hill

Now renamed Toilet Paper Hill (in Part II), it was originally named Commando Hill when, riding up this hill, Diana's underwear were just not cooperating, and she stopped, got off her horse, and ripped them off, and went commando the rest of the ride. Or so the story goes. The toilet paper later came into play on this same hill, and "Toilet Paper Hill" just stuck. (Pun intended.)

Steph's Trail

If you don't have a lot of time, and you just want to get a horse out, like, say, a fat horse, like, say, Dudley who always needs exercise, on a short ride, you can trot or canter a good non-stop 1 1/2 miles of Steph's trail up on the SE flats, then either turn around and take it right back, or make a loop of it back along the Tower Trail.

Tower Trail

This trail houses the internet tower, the means by which all my brought-to-you-by-me stories are sent out into the enet-osphere. The last part is a steepish pay-attention-and-watch-your-footing kind of scenic trail back down into the canyon. You can trot or canter most of this mile-plus trail to the tower, with a bird's eye view all along and down into Pickett Crick. 

Dudley likes to stop up here by this tower and observe the canyon below him. He has even fallen asleep on his feet up here, with me on his back, for like 5 or 10 whole minutes, until I finally wake him up to ride back home because I'm getting bored or cold.

Rye Patch

Is a nice good-footing, fairly easy 18-ish mile loop, if you want to get a long one in with a lot of steady trotting. It goes out to and across the highway by the Plane Crash and the Dead Car and on the Bones Trail (in Part I). It's out to the NE. It's called Rye Patch because there's an actual dirt road we cross named Rye Patch. Because why, I don't know. What is a rye patch anyway?

Brown's Creek

It's out to the SW, also around 18 miles, and it has some good sand washes to work down, and some good hill climbing on the way back, including the second most scenic half of the Hart Creek Loop.

Hart Creek Loop

If we want to impress a riding visitor, we take him/her on this loop. You take Merri's trail (Part I) to and along the Hart Creek drainage, ride along the creek for a while and right up to the Little Hart Creek Canyon notch, (that's the top photo), then make a big climb back out of the drainage, along a knife(ish) edge ridge back up onto the flats. It is often part of our endurance rides, but we do only take visitors we like on this trail.

Rim Trail

This is often part of our endurance rides, the 2-track rim trail overlooking the Hart Creek drainage and the distant tiny 'burb of Oreana. It's pretty spectacular. Both Jose and Dudley love to stop along here and just look at the scenery.

Carol's Gate

Somebody, who shall be left nameless, cut the fence wires and put this easy-open horse-back gate in the fence. I don't know who did it, but it's a safe gate in a Public Lands fence line that gives us easy access onto Our Public Lands, whereas we and everybody else was just going through the wash where the barbed wire had originally been washed and torn out.

Lost Juniper RANCH

Not to be confused with Lost Juniper Trail (in Part II), it's the ranch next door. But the Lost Juniper stories are common. When neighbors first looked at the ranch, there was a tiny juniper growing near the creek cottonwoods. Next time they looked they couldn't find the juniper, until it grew a bit bigger. Now, you still can't find the juniper - because it's so big it blends right in with the cottonwoods. In fact, when my eyeballs were pointed toward this "lost juniper," they immediately focused on the little juniper-child next to it. Both the ranch and the trail junipers are lost, except to those of us who know where they are.

What's In A (Trail) Name?

Tuesday October 6 2015

Mankind has named roads and trails since the beginning of time, to indicate where you're coming from and where you're going to, and to give you a kind of invested ownership in a place. Same thing here in Owyhee with the trails we ride. For example:

Tevis Trail

You've all heard of the 100-mile Tevis trail in California, and you've no doubt heard about the steep cliffs and canyons you ride above, and places such as the self-explanatory "Pucker Point" where you don't want your horse to make a mistake and step off the trail. Our Tevis Trail is about 15 yards long, and it's not near as steep or deep as anything on the real Tevis trail, (it's more like a 50 foot slide than a 500 foot drop), but you'd just as soon not slip off there. It's so short, that by the time you start to pucker, you've already traversed it. It's the tame Owyhee version of the Tevis trail. That this very short trail even got a name is because it's one of our main access trails out southeast toward the BLM hinterlands.

Toilet Paper Hill

Obviously, this hill is so-named because someone had to get off to wee, and they dropped their toilet paper. (Yes, they picked it up the next time they rode it.)

Tamara's Hill

"Wow, what did I do to get a hill named after me?" Tamara asked. Well, it's because that hill needed a name, and it was the first trail that Tamara rode when she came out to visit Connie.

Badlands

If you've ever been to Badlands National Park in South Dakota, you've got an idea of what our Owyhee Badlands trail looks like - only on a much tinier and more modest scale. Lots of water-eroded rivulets coming off these mud-clay hills and tiny hoodoo sculptures. Squint, and use your imagination to make it as big and bad as Badlands National Park.

Blonde Cow Wash

This is a great training sand wash, about 1 1/2 miles long on the upper end. It's so named because we saw - what else - a blonde cow in it once.

Bilbo Baggins Trail/Frodo Baggins Wash

Great names, yes? Bilbo came about, because back then around the time of the Lord of the Rings movies, I was riding a short, compact little horse named Billy, who just reminded me of a little hobbit. That's the thought that popped into my head, as I was riding Billy along this trail. Naturally, this trail with Billy became the Bilbo Baggins Trail. 

There's another nice training wash that branches off Bilbo, which makes a nice loop - so naturally, this became the Frodo Baggins wash.

Antelope Loop

Connie came upon, you guessed it, a little herd of antelope in this nice short little wash/trail.

Lost Juniper Wash

Not only is Lost Juniper Ranch next door, but there's a secret juniper tree in one of the side folds of this wash that only those privy to the information know where to look for it. There's even a Raven nest in this secret juniper tree!

Three Cheese Casserole

Up the Training Wash, down Spring Ranch Road wash, up Blonde Cow wash. If you do all Three Cheeses, it's a strenuous workout. You can also do Two Cheeses, or Two And A Half Cheeses, to make the workout a little easier.

Merri's Trail

I found this short-cut trail to our regular Hart Creek loop, after a new fence cut off our regular access. I actually have cows to thank for making the trail; I just followed the right one that connected. Of course there's also a Steph's Trail, a nice 1 1/2-mile flat trail up on a ridge that is her regular favorite; and a John's Trail, where he discovered a nice back detour around a homestead that keeps us off private property.

Krusty's Trail

Steph's wonderful old Orlov Trotter, in cahoots with my horse Stormy, found, marked, and stomped down this trail down our canyon as an alternate to the regular road.

Bones Trail

This nice shortcut from the BeeHives to the Highway crossing is marked by cow carcass bones.

Around the Block

If you wanted to close your eyes and imagine you were in a big city (although pray tell, why would you do that!), you could walk a big city block around skyscrapers. This 16-mile loop goes up Spring Ranch road to the Owyhee mountains, along the base of them, and back down Bates Creek Road - like going around a biiiiiiig city block.

Hallelujah Trail

Regina discovered this awesome trail for one of her spring rides in the general area of the Snake River. It's a 2-track jeep road along a Badlands rim. That first time we rode it, the skies were blue, flowers were popping out of the desert, and the view to the Owyhee mountains 15 miles away was just awesome. Hallelujah!

AK-47 Trail

Carol and I were sent out to ride and mark this cut-off trail out of Lost Juniper Wash to the BeeHives. As we set off on this trail, some hoodlums were off in the not-too-distance firing off AK-47's, kalashnikovs, M16's, cannons, whateverthehell was in their arsenal. Neither August nor Dudley wanted any part of that! We turned around and rode home, just in case they had high powered scopes and too much beer and thought we looked like moose in the desert.

Dead Cow Baby Loop

This is an 18-mile loop: Bilbo/Antelope Loop/Lost Juniper/AK-47/Beehives/Spring Ranch Road/Blonde Cow/Pickett Creek Canyon. Along Spring Ranch road this spring, as we were doing this hodgepodge loop of trail sections, in a span of riding it 2 days in a row, we came across 3 dead baby cows. Well - what else are you going to call this epic trail? We really did try calling it other names, but Dead Cow Baby Loop defined it best and stuck.