While we were at Cheyenne almost everything that could go wrong on the ranch, did. Things broke down, an intern had a wreck (but was okay), irrigation systems went wonky and one of our ranch vehicles was stolen up on the mountain at the ranch’s cow camp.
Oh yeah…by the way…about 600 cow/calf pairs were taken up on the mountain in mid-July.
Two interns stay up at the cow camp every week. Our lead intern always goes up every week and the others take turns. They leave the main ranch on Saturday night and come back down the following Friday night. The cow camp is a nice cabin with a generator. During day the interns work, gather cows, fix fence, doctor, push the cows to different allotments, make sure the cows have access to water, etc. They leave the camp on horseback in the early mornings and come back to the camp in the evenings.
They left one morning and when they got back in the afternoon the vehicle was gone. Nothing else was.
Word spread pretty fast up on the mountain about the stolen vehicle. The ranch called it in to the local sheriff’s office, they contacted the forest rangers, and forest rangers then talk to people camping, scouting, etc. Also, a state trooper was up on the mountain scouting for elk on his off day and heard the report on one of his walkie/talkies. He spied the vehicle through his binoculars, came back to the ranch and showed Wooster where it would be at on some of the ranches maps. The vehicle was located about a mile from the cow camp.
We got to ride up and find it, look it over and help drive it back down.
(our chariot. The General Manager’s side by side)
The ride to the rim usually takes us about an hour in our truck. In the trusty side by side it only took us about 30 minutes.
(our truck at the rim back in June 2014)
In our truck, we get out and are all nice and clean. The ride in the side by side? Not so much….
We got a llliiiiiilllllttttle dusty. Okay…a lot dusty. We were caked in dirt.
From the rim, you follow a narrow trail almost straight down. I don’t have pictures of it, because I was holding onto babies and we all were pretty dusty. From the rim to the spot to where the vehicle was, it took us another 30 or so minutes.
Everything looked fine with the cruiser. It is a bit temperamental and you have to do certain things to get it to crank sometimes. Sometimes you don’t and it cranks fine. We think that the people stole it, it cranked fine, and they got to this point and turned it off and couldn’t crank it again. They had the hood up and jimmed. But everything was fine.
They tinkered on it for a little bit and then it started right up. We then eeeasseeed our way back up and down the mountain to the ranch. The total trip took us a little over 3 hours.
It was a good ride up the mountain.
