Jackson
Jackson is a wild burro that now lives at Cowboy Trail Rides, located directly across the road from Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
A few years ago there was a large herd of wild burros that lived in the area, but over time the burros became domesticated and learned how to stand in the road and beg for food. Unfortunately, the burros caused a lot of traffic accidents and a number of burros were hit and killed by vehicles. For the safety of burros and people, the herd was removed from the area, except for Jackson who now greets visitors when they stop by Cowboy Trail Rides.
Cowboy Trail Rides is located at the base of Blue Diamond Mountain. This is a popular multi-use area where there are guided horseback rides, bike riders and hikers all using the same system of trails. However, hikers have the advantage of being able to following some trails through the canyons that are too steep for horses and bikes. Since I do not like stepping in horse manure, or being run over by bikers, we decided to make a loop out of two lesser used trails.
Boneshaker (probably named by the bike riders) is a very steep, rocky trail that is seldom used by bikers and unusable by horses. Because of the trail's steepness, people that do use the trail typically do it on the downhill part of their trip. However, being a contrarian, I decided that we should do the trail from the bottom up and then come down one of the trails with a more gradual incline.
After stopping to look at some of the trail-ride horses, we came across several flocks of Chuckers that were looking for food along the trail. We were able to get fairly close to the birds because they did not seem to have a fear of humans.
A short distance from the horse corrals, the trail becomes much steeper as it turns up the mountain. While hiking up the trail there are nice views to the north of Red Rock Canyon NCA
Throughout Blue Diamond Mountain there are large deposits of fossilized seaweed attached to the rocks.
Conglomerate rock is composed of small rocks, pebbles, sand, gravel, silt and clay that have been fused together to make a single rock. There are also a number of other sedimentary rocks in the area.
After arriving at the top of Boneshaker, the hike along the top of the ridge has some great views in all directions.
None of the desert plants were in bloom; so there were no spectacular flower colors, but there were several shades of lichen on the rocks.
After about 2.5 miles and a little over 1,000 feet elevation change, we joined the Three Amigos trail that connected to the Bob Gnany Trail for our trip back to the parking lot.
Just before reaching the bottom of the hill, at the junction with Muffin Trail, we met bikers coming down the trail that were not too happy. We visited with two of the people and they said it was the worst trail they had ever been on. Apparently they had to push and carry their bikes a lot more than anticipated.
Just a short distance from the bikers, we met a group that were part of a trail ride. It makes one realize that this really is a multi-use area!
BONUS PICTURES BY KOLOHE
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