Our Wild Horse Adventure into Sandwash Basin Colorado

This summer Sara and I drove west to a place in Colorado called Sandwash Basin; this is located in the northwest corner of Colorado.  Our destination was in the high plains of Colorado located on BLM land just outside of Craig Colorado. We had become fans of a Facebook page, Sandwash Basin Wild Horses and we had been watching their postings of the wild horses in this area. These noble animals could be found dancing on the high plains with their bands and we just fell in love with their painted features and sheer beauty.  We knew we would have to visit this place and sure enough we packed up the jeep and headed west.  Our love of horses or stated properly, Sara’s love of horses has transcended into my own heart in a way I never would have imagined. What I have learned here on the farm about horses and out in Colorado is their never ending ability to absorb my thoughts or pull me away from the daily stress of life.

It was here on the farm I learned of their playground antics; there is a pecking order and depending on where the horse falls in the pecking order, will greatly impact how they get to interact with the other horses.  Our first year here we had a mare that ruled the pasture; frankly she was a bitch!  She kept at her side the young quarter horse and would not allow our Arab to be near him.  After a while we attempted to have her trained, but the trainer we chose let us know that she was going to be a difficult horse to train, and even once she was trained she was going to have some temper issues. Needless to say we shipped her off to another owner due to the fact neither Sara nor I wanted to deal with her poor attitude.   I think this was foretelling for me on how important it is to work with your horse(s) and do the ground work early on, if you ever expect to get anywhere. 

In the wild the pecking order is a more dramatic work and has much to do with the survival of a band as it does with forming new families.  I learned of how bands and the head stallion will force the young stallions out on their own at a certain age thus leaving them out in the wild without a band or to form up with other young bachelors.  The amazing part is to understand just how loyal the band is to each other and will not normally separate from each other.  Watching a stallion motivate his band into moving is quite a picture in itself; the stallion will walk behind the band and start herding them to the next area simply by walking briskly behind and nodding its head up and down constantly.  So I have to wonder what they might be saying, “move along now, it’s time to get to the next area!”

After driving through some magnificent country which included going through Estes Park and staying at the Stanley Hotel and driving through Rocky Mountain National Park (site seeing some incredible Elk along the roadside) we arrived in Craig Colorado. We had originally planned on heading straight out to Sandwash Basin, but due to the time of day of our arrival, we had to wait another day; we did not want to pick out a camping spot in the dark! The plan for the next day was to meet up with the group and the person who started the Facebook page, Nancy Roberts.  They had posted a time to meet and go out to view the horses.  Nancy who it turns out was a Wisconsin girl at one time, started the page and through her work with others, has been naming the horses and counting them.  It was remarkable to have her tell us the names of the horses or their background into how they came about in the various bands.  Our drive to the meeting area was fairly easy, with the exception of finding the turnoff to head into the BLM area being a little obscure.  Interestingly our best friend were our maps, you know those paper items you used to use when driving somewhere!  GPS is great but knowing how to use a map is still quite useful.  We arrived at the meet about a half an hour late but fortunately the group was still waiting.  I love the smell of the desert, it has the skunk smell and sweet sage smell all at the same time and this area was no different.  Getting out of our vehicle I took in the sweet smell of this desert and looked around the sage and cedars where we found our group.  We met Marty, Stella and Joe who were going to head out with us.  Stella Trueblood is part of another group SWAT or Sandwash Advocate Team; they too have a Facebook page and from what we learned the two groups are going to form together.  The first page has about 50,000 likes while Stella’s page is at about 1,600, but both are out there to inform the public, and make them aware of the horses. 

  After a short meet and greet we all loaded back into our vehicles and followed Nancy and Marty out on to the basin trails. Sara and I were admiring the back roads into the desert (little did we know just how familiar we were to become of these roads) when we came upon our first band.  We got out and started photographing the horses. The first thing I noticed was the camera gear of the others; we have a nice camera but these folks are serious business and their cameras were capable of shooting some pretty amazing shots! The first shots I took with the camera were okay but I knew I was going to have to do some work on adjusting the lighting, if we were going to get any decent shots.  After our first stop we moved on and eventually ended up at the local watering hole for the horses; the BLM had built this hole with a solar pump for the horses.  What a place! It seemed that band after band was showing up for their drink and swim; we were mesmerized by all of the horses showing up! One of the picturesque parts of these horses is their wild manes; they have the Rastafari look, long and in some cases multi colored manes! While we were learning and discussing about the various bands a couple of stallions got into action; the first one a red roan who looked like he had been splattered with white wash, started kicking up dirt near a grey stallion the two of them were ready to show who was boss! The grey stallion reared up onto his hind legs, his hoof clearly raised above the other’s head, his muscles flexing mightily as he demonstrated who was in charge! Wow! Our first day out and we just experienced an amazing scene!  I called it the money shot; although I almost missed it altogether as my camera lighting was off! I clicked away and walked away with what I felt was clearly the shot of the day for us! The sound of scuffling dirt and snorting could be heard by all as the two horses were demonstrating how they operate in the wild.  If you look closely you can see bite marks all over these horses, and as we watched these two you get an understanding as to where those marks come from.

Well after our first day we knew we had arrived and although we wanted to stay out, we knew we needed to find our campsite and get it set up for the next few days. 

 Marty as it turned out was camping and offered us a site near his; this later proved to be a wise choice on our part! We headed back to the area where Marty had set his camp and found an area we felt to be suitable for ourselves.  We unloaded our jeep and set our camp. We had a magnificent view out into the desert and we were surrounded by cedars to help keep wind off of us.  After setting up camp and eating some dinner inside our tent, because it started to rain outside, Marty stopped by and asked if we would like to go back out, it had stopped raining. We were all setup at the campsite and we said sure we would love to go back out.  The smell of the desert after a rain is definitely stronger and more pungent, in a good way! The air that night was full of sage and other plants who just received a nice soaking. Marty was from Wyoming and he too had learned of the basin through Facebook. Marty offered to drive as he knew the trails and areas to head out to, we were fine with him taking us out. We learned Marty had come out of retirement working for a coal company in the mechanical area but now was ready to retire again! He, like us, enjoyed the adventure of being out in the wild and had also traveled around as well. Marty took us to another smaller watering hole (a natural one) where we ran into a couple of guys who were also taking photographs of horses.  Not wanting to interfere with their photography we asked if it would be alright if we joined them.  They had no problem allowing us to pull up alongside and shoot our photos as well.  I was beginning to think we were on an African safari and we had found ourselves out on the Savanna!  Sara and our kids have gone on an African safari and I even asked her later didn't this feel like one!  She agreed it most definitely did!  We had even brought Ernest Hemingway's book The Green Hills of Africa book on Cd with us for our drive.  The obvious difference for us, we were shooting with a camera and not clawing our way through incredibly rough terrain to shoot an animal for its horn.  Yet, it was still part of our adventure and as the sun was setting through the clouds and we were shooting a band horses with our cameras.  Once again the camera equipment used by others was by far superior, this time I pointed it out to Sara.  She had a chance to see firsthand as one of the other gentleman showed her some of the photos he had shot, spectacular, I believe was the word Sara used.  She even had a suspicion that one or both of them worked for a magazine or were at the very least professional photographers!  Well at least we had our good ole cannon and with some work with the lighting we were able to shoot our own favorite shots.  I am really big into Macro shooting; this is where you frame a shot that you have zoomed in to and the object is usually tiny but the shot makes it look larger than life.  In this case I like to zoom into the horses head or part of their body to emphasize the look they are giving me.  It doesn't always work as the horse moves its head or body. 

Marty and the two other gentleman were having a discussion about the horses and it seems there are a lot of myths about the animals or at the very least the management of the horses seems to be a bit dependent on the political mood of the public, ranchers, and gas folks in the area.  Ranchers want the land for grazing, the gas and oil folks do not prefer to have wild horses running through their drilling operations and the general public doesn’t have much information on what or why roundups are happening.  I have been surprised at just how political the whole situation really is; the belief that these horses are a nuisance and causing problems is far from what we saw.  I actually believe they are doing the area some good; they provide back valuable nutrients to the soil and what they graze compared to sheep or other animals is minimal.  Nature has a way of controlling the herds, foals do not always survive the harsh climate and there are other elements that are at work. It is true the horses do not have any natural predators; you would think the rattlesnake would be one!  Weather on the other hand is something that can be just as dangerous; the winter time in this area can get up to two feet of snow and finding food or some kind of shelter in that environment can prove to be quite tough.  The point is the environment in itself can be the very force that controls the population.  Nancy Roberts was in fact working on counting foals a couple of years ago and now was setting out to see how many of those foals actually survived.  I don’t have the answer to what to do or if something should be done but know enough to realize that as soon as it becomes political you can expect anything but a logical solution.  After our discussions and many pictures later it was time to head back.  Marty dropped us off back at our campsite and we talked about what time we might like to head out in the morning?  Sara and I were tired from our travels and opted out of the bright and early idea; instead we offered to meet up with Marty later in the day. He was agreeable and left us to our campsite. 

Our first night was spectacular as various cloud formations came across and the sun was setting. That night was going to be a full moon and it definitely lit up the desert! Shining across the sage and mountains it was delivering a beautiful glimmering light to us! The air was warm, thankfully, as we had learned it was too dry to have a campfire.  We did not need a fire; we were literally surrounded by moonlight!  We started to get a sprinkling of rain and thought it would be easy to put the tailgate up on the jeep and sit under it. Great idea and yet, poor thinking on our part! We sat under the cover of the jeep’s hatch enjoying wine and discussing our day.  We had arrived and we were excited of what we had already spotted and what we might find the next day!  I don’t believe I have ever heard of anyone planning a vacation of this sort but I can state without a doubt it is well worth the experience if you are up to camping and dealing with some of the harsh natural environments.  We headed to our tent for the night as we heard the coyotes howling away and the sprinkling of rain.  Our first night was uneventful and quite comfortable in our tent.

We awoke the next morning fresh from a great night of sleep.  We had a leisurely breakfast; all I can say, as a chef, dehydrated food has come a long way! Ours that morning was scrambled eggs, sausage and potatoes and it tasted pretty good! We started packing our site to leave it for the day, when Marty came up on his dirt bike.  Marty was worried a major storm was going to roll in and he did not want to get trapped in the desert; he was packing up and heading out.  Sara noticed an elk shed attached to his handle bars and was admiring it when Marty offered the shed to her.  We were surprised and said it was beautiful he should keep it; Marty explained he had many more at home and she would be welcome to have it. Needless to say we now own a very large elk shed!  We were all set to head out for the day and jumped into our jeep, camera ready, water ready and some food, we turned the key and nothing! I tried it again and yup our battery was dead! Holy crap! We knew or hopped Marty hadn’t finished packing or had left; it was 20 miles to the road and another 30 miles to the nearest town! As I raced up to Marty’s campsite I was trying to think of how I was going to McGyver the battery to get a charge into it! This one was going to be a tough one! If you don’t remember, McGyver was a television show from the 80’s and the guy McGyver could fix anything with a string and a rubber band! I doubt some of the stuff he did was real but today whenever something has to be cobbled together the phrase McGyver it comes up. Incidentally, I learned later of a couple of tricks; if you can pop the cover off of your battery (where the cells are located) and drop a couple of tablets of aspirin into each cell it should create enough acid to turn the car over? The only problem is most batteries today do not have access to those cells! I also learned of using coke might also do the trick?  I have not tried this yet but we have enough batteries around here to give this a try! Fortunately I didn’t have to cobble anything together, as Marty just started to pull out when I caught up to his campsite. I explained our situation and he thankfully drove down and gave us a jump.  So our little rain cover idea was definitely not a good one; remember the little dome light that goes on when you open a door well it will run down your battery! From that point forward we made sure every possible juice sucking device in that vehicle was shut down before we did anything else at the campsite! In fact when we came to our first stop Sara and I were a bit hesitant to shut the vehicle off; we were worried the alternator had not charged it enough!  We eventually gained the courage to shut it off and the vehicle started up just fine and we did not have any trouble with the battery for the rest of the trip.  Lesson for all don’t use your car battery for anything but driving when out in the wilderness or travel with a method to charge it or change the battery out with a fresh battery!

Our adventure for the day turned out to be fun and exciting.  I think for the most part our eyes were constantly focused on finding the next band of horses.  We were not disappointed as we came across band after band. Each of the bands had their own personality and or way of watching us as we photographed them.  It seems they were quite use to these strange moving objects that would come to a halt and have humans depart from inside and hold up these box like things and stand there looking at them! I think a few of them were actually posing for us! Our adventure for the day was full of pictures of horses with their foals, tough looking stallions and the occasional Pronghorn running through the desert.  We snapped pictures at everything and in fact I think we came home with well over 650 pictures of wild horses! A few of those I am sharing here on this blog. The real adventure was going to happen later that night when we went to bed!  We returned to our campsite and setup for dinner and making sure we were not running down the battery somewhere from something plugged in to the vehicle! We sure as hell were not going to wake up to another dead battery!  The moon that night did not disappoint us it was bright and full! We had dinner and enjoyed some wine as we reminisced of our day’s activities.  Describing the smells and other sensory feelings one gets while camping where there is absolutely no one around is something like this; imagine not hearing a single car, the only sound comes from the wind, birds, coyotes and other creatures sharing the space around you. There were these birds that would make an incredible sound as they traveled at warp speed diving to get some insect; it really was something to hear or have happen right above your head!  The first time I was using the facilities nearby to expel myself when one of them dived right by my ear; I nearly jumped out of my pulled down pants! Other than the strange bird we were not visited by any unwanted friends and really enjoyed the time out in the desert air at night. We were tired from our day in the hot sun and it was ready to hit the sack. We climbed into our tent and soon fell asleep. We awoke to a rather large storm outside of our tent.  I was literally counting the time between the lightening and the thunder to see how close the lightening was to our tent! Sara was up checking the tent for any leaks, there were no leaks! Outside of our tent it was blowing rain and coming down hard. We had planned to drive into Steamboat Springs the next day and began to wonder if we were going to even get out of the basin to do so.  We had heard of how bad it can get when the heavy rains come; the desert floor becomes thick like cement in places and or the mud becomes so deep it is not possible to drive through. Awesome laying there thinking about being stuck out there! 

We woke the next morning and inspected the area for any storm damage or other problems, like a mudslide or worse! There were no issues around the campsite and we made our breakfast and readied our campsite to head out.  As drove out we came across a few areas that required us to put the vehicle into four wheel low and shoot through some deep puddles. At a couple of places the rain had turned the soft desert sand into wet slippery silt that stuck to your tires like cement!  We got through some pretty tight places and never got stuck anywhere but there were a couple of places that we were not certain we would make it through.  We had survived a major rain storm and drove through the mess the storm had left behind. Success!

Our trip into Steamboat Springs was planned because we wanted to meet up with a friend of ours who is a chef in Steamboat at a place called Elkstone Farms.  Dan Almquist is an alumnus and former instructor of our culinary program and when he was a student he worked in our restaurant the Sandhill Inn.  We had known Dan for a number of years and we were excited to see his new place of employment.  We did a little research into his operation prior to our arrival and found it to be an awesome place; they specialize in raising fresh produce for the local markets along with preparing various canned items.  We met at Elkstone and just marveled at his location! The farm sits at the bottom of a mountain and overlooks Steamboat Springs.  His kitchen looks out over the valley!  The farm has a greenhouse and three hoop houses.  Dan gave us a tour of the farm and we found orange trees, and bananas growing!  Across the street, where the hoop houses were located, they were growing anything from tomatoes to greens.  Dan has found himself an incredible place to practice his trade and on top of that found himself a pretty nice girlfriend (she likes horses and works at a place with horses). That’s a good start! We enjoyed lunch in town with Dan and had some great conversation on food, horses and life in general but we knew we needed to get back to our campsite before dark so we parted our ways and headed out.

Upon returning to our campsite the rain had dried up in most places and going back was not as tough.  Our foray into the basin continued onward.  We enjoyed a peaceful evening as we were excited to continue on and explore more of this beautiful country.  The next morning we mapped out our route for the day.  We were going to drive north east into an area we had not yet driven.  Our day of driving and photographing was without a doubt one to remember.  One of the trails we were on led us to several bands in one area. We parked the jeep and got out to shoot some shots of the bands in the area; Sara even attempted to call one to her, but to no avail.  We got back into the jeep and as we drove behind one band in particular we watched a stallion come back to a pile of manure and witnessed firsthand the meaning behind stud pile! Yes, I have to admit something here; when we first arrived into the Sandwash Basin we had not heard of the phrase, stud pile.  We had the, naïve, thought that those wild horses must have consumed a great deal to leave behind huge piles! I know, really! How could we have been so naïve! The stud, upon coming on a fresh pile, will sniff, snort and even have a guttural sound over the pile and turn around, spread his hind quarters, lift his tail and leave behind his own droppings on top of the pile.  It really is something to see or at the very least see the reaction of the horse and its behavior.  Another time we drove up to a band and when we stopped, the band was curious of us and actually came closer to our vehicle. This is familiar to us as our own horses will do this but we certainly did not expect them to do this in the wild.  It was almost as if they wanted to pose for our camera!  We did shoot a number of pictures of this photogenic band.  Our day was indeed eventful as we came upon band after band of horses.  At one point we witnessed close to 75 horses racing up a mountainside or another time we had a group of three playing peekaboo with us and our camera! They were hiding above us and one at a time they would pop their heads up peering down at us! Towards the end of the day we had decided we wanted to go back to the watering hole we had visited on our first day. This was along the way back so it would not be out of our way.  We arrived and parked away from the watering hole as we had learned to do earlier.  We walked down and sure enough there were bands of horses hanging out at the watering hole.  What made this a remarkable stop was what happened shortly after our arrival.  We were taking pictures of the various bands at the hole when we noticed a group of studs who were traveling as bachelors.  Or at least that was what Sara had surmised.  Sara was sitting above me when suddenly one of the bachelors whinnied as he looked up above Sara.  To our surprise there was a young foal up there! The stud raced up the hill past Sara and stood next to the foal! At this point I asked Sara if she was sure the stud was a stud and not a mare! She wasn’t sure and neither was I! What we had just witnessed will definitely be forged into our memories forever!  I got some great shots of the foal and the charcoal horse standing next to the foal.  Later we learned, through Facebook, that Sara was right! The foal, it seemed had been adopted by the stallion! We found out the foal was wandering with this band of bachelors and it was suspected to have lost its mare.  Timing in life is everything and our timing that day was indeed spot on! By this time we were exhausted and it was time to head back to our campsite for our final night.  We felt it had ended on an incredible note and, although, we could have stayed out longer it was time to head back.

Needless to say it was an adventure we both will have to share for years to come and what we learned, witnessed and felt will always be a part of our lives!  Our knowledge of horses grew just a little bit more and the adventurous tour through Sandwash Basin was fulfilled!