The next morning I awoke around 5:30 with the sun up after riding up from Waterton Canyon to the rock quarry, and could already feel the heat.  We were at the start of a record setting heat wave in the west, and so Kyle and I decided to abandon our Little Scraggy loop, which has a lot of sun exposure through the burn area, and just head back to Waterton Canyon and the comfort of air conditioning.  We made the right call considering this tragic story.

First, we set off to take pics in the bright early sun of the crushed old vehicles in the quartz quarry.

The area has huge quartz deposits all over the place.

As we ascended, the heat became more oppressive, and we had to take quite a few breaks. Finally we got back into the forest, and bombed down.  And of course, I hit something and started to bleed.  Just a minor flesh wound.

We then entered Waterton Canyon, and as we descended, I thought about turning off the GoPro, but then decided “Eh, it’s just disk space.”  And I’m glad I didn’t, because we got what I had hoped for – at first a single bighorn sheep lamb, and then a cluster of three walking along the road.  Be sure to check the video out for how the sheep gets out of the gated lawn.

We got to the parking lot around 2pm, and it was 100 degrees in the car!  We are considering doing this segment as early as 5am when we start the full trail on July 5th.