Horses, Hitches and Rocky Trails

Wilderness Volunteers came down this past week to volunteer for the Forest Service maintaining trails in Dark Canyon. We had originally set up the trip to work on eradicating tamarisk, but for a number of reasons we switched to a trail project. The volunteers hiked in with our trail crew last Sunday. Monday and Tuesday we packed thier food and group equipment in on horses. We came back out on Wednesday and Thursday for meetings and office work and back in on Friday and Saturday to pack the rest of thier food and gear out. They got a lot of much needed trail maintenence done down in the canyon. We packed watermelons in to them on the last trip in, it may have been the first time watermelon weas eaten in the bottom of Dark Canyon, unless the Ancient Ones were growing corn and watermelons.

We could not come down the Trail Canyon trail with stock so we ended up coming down the Horse Pasture trail which meant we had to go 12 miles one way in to get to their basecamp. We made the the trip twice last week for a total of 48 miles with the packhorses.

Two bull elk in Horse Pasture Canyon. They thought our horses were elk and ran right up to us before they realized we were'nt elk.

Scorup Cabin. The cabin was used as a line cabin by some of the big cattle operations that used to operate in the canyon.


Coming up one of the steep sections with unloaded packhorses.

Ponies watering up at a lunch break