At the top of the first ridge, with snow-crusted Mahogany Mountain in the background:
Now it's getting near dark... and starting to rain. I should mention that Leslie Gulch is named after Hiram Leslie, an early settler who was killed by lightning here. This fact prominent in my mind, I decide to turn back here and head down.
After a rippin' good 10% descent back to the car, I discover that my camera pouch is empty. Uh-oh. Did it fall out on the ride down? Then it dawns on me. After taking the above photo, I have left my digital camera back on top of the ridge, strapped to a fencepost! Good thing it's a cheap camera, because it's too dark to go back and get it, and it'll be a goner after tonight's rain and maybe (at that elevation) snow.
I'd been planning on doing a different ride the next day, but instead I must retrace my pedal strokes. Even if the camera's toast, it's worth retrieving so I can try to get the photos off the memory card. At the ridgetop I find my camera, almost dry again from the morning sun. I cross my fingers and throw the switch. Holy crap, it works! I take a test photo of the view back down into Leslie Gulch from the same spot. Looking good!
I continue riding up, over another ridge. I decide not to continue down the back side of the ridge, because it means I'll have to come back up this:
The secret reason I go to the desert all the time: anywhere you go out there, you always have female companionship.
(Although like many human females, they are initially curious and come up to check me out, and then run away! ;-))
I find a faint jeep track that leads down the ridgeline. Glad I found it, because it leads to this jaw-dropping view over all of Lake Owyhee and its surroundings. I already posted this pic last week, but here it is again:
Sweet! I'm glad I went back up and got my camera. As nice as this picture looks, it absolutely does not do the actual view justice - it is simply one of the most spectacular sights I have seen in my entire life. In a couple of weeks Sparty and I will be spending 4 days with our bikes and trailers, riding all over the stuff you see on the right half of this picture.
Finally a bonus non-biking pic, taken from the car. These eroded rocks are common in this area, and it really is in Oregon, not Utah. The rocks in the left-center of the photo really are blue-green, and if you look closely at the center of the pic (sorry about the exposure quality) you will observe a pretty large balancing rock:
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