Umtanum Creek Canyon — Monday, Dec. 18, 2000

Central Washington > Yakima

I won't go into a lot of detail(well, OK...I will...), since I was just exploring here 2.5 weeks ago and gave everyone a bible to read about that day. But I returned with Dan in tow for another visit, with hopes of locating roaming, awesome beasties in the Bighorn Sheep class again - ya know, he had to play with the new camera lens and all. Heck, we didn't even have to hike...gliding across the icy roads in the Yakima River Canyon, deep in thought about which side canyon slot we would explore off of the Umtanum Creek Canyon should we not find them varmits in the first 2-3 miles in...I decided to start looking for some elk or deer by the river. Not three seconds after my FIRST look across the river, I saw something...before I could really say I saw something, the huge full curl of horns from the large Bighorn Sheep ram became clear, and we stopped as far off the road as possible, both jumped out, ran across ice and snow to the back of his truck to start hauling out photography equiptment that was packed for hiking. Within mer seconds, we were both firing off images of the beautiful animal. Soon, we realized we weren't looking at just the one, but over the next 20 minutes we realized along the train track, on the slope, and mostly in the thick brush along the river, we had on our hands a herd of 21!! At this time, I realized I wasn't even wearing a coat, and I was kneeling down in the snow and ice and was numb as it was in the 20s outside. More film, a coat, and we spent a good 30 minutes here. It was cold out, but the heat from the purring motordrives on our cameras rapidly firing off images kept the hands warm :-) Oh, we did then go hike up Umtanum Canyon for about 4 hours too. No animals there this time, but massively more detailed exploration of the beaver activity, dozens of dams, and we found an active den site with a basketball size opening in the ice on the creek where the wonders of nature go in and out. We hiked in about 6-8"" of snow up in the canyon, and roamed all over the place tracing the lives of numerous animal species...no need to try to follow any trail out here. When we left the area, some Bighorns were still visible in the same area of the Yakima Canyon, but high up the slopes grazing in the high-up sunshine.