Quad trip to Three Forks

John Hauck arrived on Thursday evening and after resting a bit, we decided it was time for a Quad trip to Three Forks. I had previously scouted (with the Kolb) a route down in there from this side of the Owyhee canyon. This allowed us to park the truck at Rome and proceed on Quads rather than drive all the way around to Jordan Valley and come in from that side. So we loaded every thing that we thought we might need on the Quad and hit the dirt.

     It was about 42 miles down in there and I only got turned around once. I was telling John that if there were only two choices, I would choose wrong 75 percent of the time. I am going to have to learn that my second choice is generally the right one. :-/ It wasn't too much of a detour however, just off to a stock pond on the other side of Mouse Trap Butte. ( I would like to know what occasioned the name.)

 

The road drops down only 1.8 miles from off the top of the mesa to the river. It however is rougher than a cob, and not at all suitable for even a four wheel drive truck.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=42.5271,-117.1828&ll=42.5271,-117.1828&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

If you cut and paste this link to your browser, and click on Satellite you can see the map of where we were camped.

We looked over the area for possible camping spots, of which there weren't many, and there were a lot more people there on a Sunday than I thought would be. We settled on a gravel bar that would supply some afternoon shade. It was actually pretty hot and both of us got a bit of sun and were actively seeking shade. We unloaded all of our stuff and went back up to the "Hot Springs", which turned out to be more of a warm Spring than hot. The water comes out of a little canyon that you can see just in front of our Quads. There was a bridge there at one time, but now it is clambering over very slick rocks.

    We did a bit more sight seeing and gathering wood for a dinner fire, as well as a bit of fishing in the river. ( Its full of Small Mouth Bass, trout and some Squaw Fish as well) Then when it cooled down we decided to go to the hot springs. I wanted to wade across the river and up to the springs rather than over a pretty nasty rock pile on the quads. John wanted to leave his boots on to cross the river, but I shamed him into wading barefooted across the river. He cussed me all evening and especially while we were out in the river limping, staggering and cussing all the rocks on the bottom of the river. He thanked me this morning however when he didn't have to put on wet boots. There was a water fall with places to sit while the river beat you into relaxation, unfortunately I didn't take the camera and missed the drowned rat look of John sitting under the water fall.

     After our bath we made our dinner fire and relaxed just watching the sun go down, and listening to the Chukar calling across the river.

 

  

 It cooled off nicely during the night, although it was a bit windy. My little "Micky Mouse" tent was hammering me pretty good all though the night, You can't get one of those little wimpy little tent pegs to do any good at all on a gravel bar.

   This morning when we got up, it clouded up and began sprinkling rain. There was a really nasty spot that was nothing but sharp undercarriage scraping rocks that we had to negotiate. That spot had me stuck and backing carefully down last night and we wanted to get over it before they got wet and more difficult. We did make it over that spot with out trouble and once we got on top of the Mesa it started raining again, this time pretty hard.  We stopped at a line shack to clean my glasses and rest a bit before continuing on.

   On our way in the day before, we were both amazed at the amount of Snake tracks crossing the dirt road. All the ones that I saw were made by Bull Snakes (Pacific Gopher Snake). If we saw 10 tracks we saw 50 or more. On the way back, I surprised a Coyote with one in his mouth, He ran off, but he didn't drop his snake. ( Food is hard to come by here)

   One of the fences has a large wooden gate across the road. When we went through the day before, John pushed my quad through while I held the gate. I wanted to save him the trouble this time and left my quad in gear, and after I opened the gate, I intended to goose the throttle and have it run through on its own power. ( I put a twist throttle on it along with the thumb lever. It is a bit sticky and I use it as a "cruise control" when my hand gets tired) Instead of goosing it, I twisted it, and off goes the quad at a pretty good clip. John is sitting there with an amazed look on his face as I am running out across a ditch and through the sage after my runaway mount that is happily roaring over the smaller sage brush in its way. It finally hit one large enough to slow it down enough so that I could catch it. When I got back to John, he swore that he could be trusted to keep quiet, but in my opinion, if you can't laugh at yourself, there is something wrong with you. I will take humor where I can find, or provide it.