JARBIDGE DAIMOND A DESERT April 09

Several of us spent a long weekend in the Jarbidge area.

Byron Defenbach

Scott & Shelby Moore

Brad Watters and his wife.

Bryon riding backwards out of truck !

We camped at the Juniper Grove Campground on the East Fork of the Jarbidge just past Murphy Hot Springs.

Saturday Byron & I rode on the Diamond A Desert. On the left is the route I wanted to ride- Arch Canyon, Look Out Pt & Black Rock Crossing. The right is what we rode ~ 130 miles. We had a late start waiting for it to warm up it was 28’ when we got up, so I wanted to skip Look Out Pt and do Arch Canyon & Black Crossing on the Bruneau River.

WHAT I WANTED TO RIDE

What we rode

Over looking Diamond A Ranch to the Jarbidge Range

Byron and me at the state line

Byron ripping into the homestead

Cowan Homestead

Arch Canyon- Is a box canyon off the Jarbidge which forms a natural corral that the cowboys would use to hold horses in the winter.

The corrals

The Arch Cowboy rock is under the ARCH

Cowboy Rock

Rock wall and fencing that completed the corral.

We ate lunch here in the bottom of the canyon.

After we climbed out of the canyon we headed off to Black Rock Crossing. I had a route plotted from the Arch to Look Out Pt, then from Look Out to Black Rock Crossing.

I though I could wing it directly to Black Rock Crossing.

Along the way we crossed Cougar Creek and the Larios Cow Camp.

Although several tracks are in Garmin database and seemed to show up Google Earth that would cut across the plateau to Black Rock Crossing I couldn’t find them on the ground

.

We decided to head south to connect to Forest Road 71 to buzz back home. We followed a fairly established two track that followed a water pipeline and every fence had a gate.

Along the way we saw a huge cloud of dust just over the rise, which was a large heard of elk. The 4-wheelers I meet on Sunday thought the heard was 200 or more.

It was large enough that Byron had time to fish out his camera and snap this photo.

It felt like a good plan until the track fizzled out at the bottom of Bear Paw Mountain ( FSR 71 was on the other side of the mountain ).

Byron guessed he only had about 50 miles of gas so we backed tracked to the last fence and followed it east and we eventually found the road.

Main street in downtown Jarbidge. Current fulltime population = 3. Grows to 50 in the summertime with 250 “guests” on the weekends.

=========================================================

Sunday Scott, Brad & I headed south to see if we could make it to Jack Creek and into Jarbidge. It was windy , cold and snowing. The ride took us over 7500 feet.

Brad & Scott @ Dave Creek

Chimney at cow camp along Rattlesnake Creek

Freighters Defeat Canyon

After negotiating snow banks, mud and sage brush we made to the Jack Creek Road.

Then the four wheelers came up and told us there was a long snow bank around the corner.

They were right !

We back tracked our way back to camp.

One of Obama’s many accomplishments in his 1^st 100 days was leading me out of the wilderness !

East Fork of the Jarbidge