Desert Long Horn Sheep
Wow, has it really been six months since I did an update? Time flies when you're out in the desert exploring and this summer just seemed to slip by.
Lot's of adventures to recount, but we'll start with something cool we found while picking our why up through Berdue canyon in the jeep.
Berdue canyon leads up from the Coachela valley in California to the back of Joshua Tree National Park. It's a rough boulder-strewn trail that takes about 4 hours to complete at low 4wd speed. We had just started up into the canyon from the Palm Springs side when we happened across a rotting corpse of a desert long horn sheep...
We actually smelled him before we saw him, because in the July sun he was pretty ripe! It looked like the coyotes had been feeding on the corpse and it was pretty ripped up. There was no way to determine what the sheep had died of, but it was interesting that the body was down in the canyon and not up in the hills. I surmise that he was looking for water and had come down into the canyon looking for a drink. The temp was hovering around 110 degrees when we were there and only the hardy can survive in that heat for long.
I had heard there was about 300 or so desert long horn sheep in the mountains surrounding Joshua Tree and Palm Springs, but in 14 years of being out here, I've never even seen one - till now!
Just another cool thing to discover in the desert!
DB
Posted: Sunday 7th December 2008, 10:46 PM
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