Once we split up with Uncle George Robby and I kept riding down the seismograph road and it became clear to me Robby really didn’t have a clue where we going.
So I finally asked him what he wanted to do. Because I could see the trees on West Fork of Dry Creek. And that seismograph road went in pretty much a straight line for the next five miles at least. Right through the same flat, bare country we had been riding in for a few miles already.
Roddy said he just wanted to check out some of the “places” (meaning ranches) on the mountain. And Robby obviously didn’t’ have any idea where we were at or which way to go. But I did.
We were just about to the Conant Place allotment. That was my family’s winter camp. I had been to the Conant place probably a hundred times from the time I was a toddler. And I started riding it when I was 10.
Robby said he was looking for a road. And I told him we could ride for the next couple miles before we hit a road. And that would be the road to the Conant Place. But still about three miles from the cabin. I suggested we take a short cut if that’s where he wanted to go. And Robby was all for it.
I turned Y-E to the northwest and we started riding cross country. I didn’t have a trail or a road but didn’t need one because I could see the “orange rocks” come into view.
Those rock outcroppings were the hallmark of the Conant place and there weren’t any outcroppings like them anywhere else on the mountain.
They were scattered all over the Conant place anywhere from 50 to 150 feet high, 25 to 100 feet thick and 100 feet to 100 yards long. They were close together but not connected.
But what made them so different is the rock outcroppings were solid granite and almost orange in color. And they were all rounded off and almost smooth.
To this day I have no idea where those formations of granite came from just stuck out there in the flat country. Or what had ground them off. But something sure did because they were almost smooth. And if you walked and/or stood on them it felt like gravity itself was even more dense.
With the orange rocks in sight the next thing I needed was a fence line that would be the eastern edge of my family’s land. And then once I found the fence line follow it west until I found a gate.
I thought we would have to ride all the way to road to the Arrowhead mine. But we hit a gate before that which was actually the old trail to Klondike Pass as it was called.
Now once inside the Conant land I had two choices. The Conant cabin, root cellar, and corrals were to the south. But I could actually see and hear the West Fork of Dry Creek running hard. Which was a rarity because they didn’t call the two creeks Dry Creek for nothing. They only ran water in the spring and were bone dry all the rest of the year.
But if Dry Creek was running it meant the “Falls” was running too and so I asked Robby if he wanted to see a water fall? And cautioned we would have to walk a little way to actually see it.
And that was because there was a trail into the falls that deer, elk, cattle, and humans could follow. But it was very tricky footing with the rocks and creek in a few places and not worth risking a rider or horse’s legs over.
Robby wanted to know how far we would have to walk and I told him maybe 300 yards at most. Which seemed reasonable enough to him because Robby had never heard of a water fall on Copper Mountain or anywhere else for that matter.
We swung to the north and road just a little way to hit the road to the Arrowhead Mine and then took it west until we hit the West Fork of Dry Creek. And I was really surprised at how much water it was running. Which meant the “Falls” would be worth seeing.
From there we had a few hundred yards to ride on a trail that went back thousands of years and across a Native American camp ground that was just as old. And I mean literally.
We found everything from Paleo points and other artifacts that were dated between 7,000 and 8,000 years to “worked” glass.
And of course the “worked” glass only dated back to just after whites arrived in that part of the country with glass bottles and jars.
The broken pieces of glass worked just as well as any other rocks for making a scrapper. So Native Americans would pick up and carry the pieces of broken glass back to camps to knock out an easy tool. And the glass would be blue by then from sitting in the sun.
Then we got to the place where the rocks pinched in forming a little canyon. And it was actually a perfect little cirque formed by a glacier. You can see them in the mountains ranges where they look almost like arm chairs spanning miles near the mountain tops.
This little cirque only spanned about 50 yards at most but still looked like an arm chair carved out of solid granite.
And on the east side of it there was a 28 spoke “Medicine Wheel” on the hill side. It was exactly like the huge Medicine Wheel on the Big Horn mountains about 150 miles to the north but tiny in comparison.
And on the west side was a burial ground for someone mighty important judging by the trouble they had to go through to get them up there.
There are also rock monuments up on the hillsides on both sides of the canyon. They are rocks piled up and most people would just walk right past them because they looked just like the rock piles prospectors used to stake their uranium claims in the 1950’s.
But if you stopped and took a close look at these rock piles you can see where the granite and quartz had ground itself down to make smooth joints just from rocking back and forth in the wind for a couple hundred years.
And another way you know whoever was buried there was mighty important is by the thousands of “Pony Beads” that washed down the cliff from the top of the hill. And we know there had to be thousands of them because I still have a few thousand of them myself.
And by the way “Pony” or “Keg” beards as they are called go clear back to the first fur trappers that came into the Wind River Basin. They would carry kegs of colored beads to trade with the Native Americans. Meaning some of them could have dated back to as far as 1811.
They were made by rolling metal rods in Porcelain powder until it built up enough to cut the little beads off individually. Which is why you will never find two Pony Beads that are exactly the same.
Robby and I had to tie our horses up at the mouth of the cirque where it looks like there is a pretty good trail. But that is very deceiving because a little further in the rocks and creek pinch together so tight the only reason there is any kind of trail there is because the cattle and wildlife make it trying to get to the only water within miles.
You have to walk over and on rocks and even in the creek if you are not careful. It is even tricky footing for humans and no place to risk a horse.
But the tricky trail with the creek really high was worth it when we got to the “Falls.” Because the creek was running so much water the Falls was “topped out” as we called it. And that doesn’t happen often.
When you finally get to the falls you are in a U-shaped formation with sheer granite cliffs about 35 feet high on three sides. The whole place is only about 90 feet wide with just enough rocks and soil on the east side for a whole bunch of plants including raspberries, goose berries, currents and roses. There is even almost always enough moisture for mosses and ferns.
The creek runs through the middle cliff where the water has pretty much polished the granite. There is one huge boulder sitting cross ways near the top of the cliff that makes a small opening. And that is where most the water runs through.
But this spring had been so wet and still raining the creek was running so much water it was blasting out of the lower hole like a huge firehose and still coming over the top of the huge boulder making a screen of water and lots of mist.
Robby was just very much impressed with that as he should have been. But also fascinated with the pool of water at the bottom of the falls. The pool was round and only about 25 feet in circumference and looked to be five or six feet at its deepest.
Robby was very excited about that because he thought it was deep enough he could take a “sand bath.” And maybe even use the water fall like a shower. In other words strip down to at least his underwear and use handfuls of wet sand to scrub off.
Robby asked me if I wanted to join him since we had no idea when or even if we could take a bath again. But I declined.
Because I knew something Robby didn’t. If might have been a pretty hot day. The water in the creek might have been a little warmer because of that.
But that same pool is there all the time even when the creek isn’t running. Because there are at least three springs feeding it. And the water is always just a few degrees above freezing.
I didn’t bother telling Robby that any more than he told me were his bronc was that morning. I figured he could find it out himself while I smoked a cigarette.
And it didn’t take Robby long to figure out how cold the water was. He didn’t even wade out up to his knees before he just splashed some water on himself and came running back out of the pool with me laughing at him.
And the laughing didn’t stop there. Robby thought he would like to dry off a little more before he put on his pants and shirt. So we hiked out with him wearing nothing but his skivvies hat and boots carrying his clothes. Which was a pretty comical sight.
Once we got back to our horses Robby got dressed and we road back down to the main road if you could call it that. It was actually one of probably a half dozen roads that crisscrossed the Conant place.
And I can tell you exactly which road to take. No matter where you are at and you see a road that looks like it goes to where you want take the road in opposite direction. There is just no rhyme or reason to the roads inside the Conant Place. And no one in the family could even explain how they got there.
Robby wanted to know where the road to the ranch house was since we couldn’t see it from there. And I decided to take him on the scenic route. A faint old wagon road that went over the top of the biggest outcropping of orange granite.
That was actually the shortest route to the Conant cabin but a very interesting and impressive trail to ride a horse over those rocks. And since we were just on a pleasure ride anyway I thought I would show Robby the sights.
