The view from my Driveway of the Big Horn Mountains behind the Veil of a big cloud bank in the Powder River Basin. That ridge is about 40 miles out from my position and the peaks of the 13,000 feet high Big Horns are 130 miles out from my viewpoint. This is actually a side show to the sunset on going off the right side of this frame.
We are as high elevation wise as the first black ridge (the Red Hills) and generally have the same weather as the high grounds around us. The lower areas down in the valley often has rain where we get snow. We call this place.. “Little Siberia” and that designation has been handed down to us from the previous owners of this ranch decades ago lol. The name still applies. But we have the views😄
As I type this, we are 4 degrees (oct 29th) at 5:14AM. … It’s October NOT November yet. Winter is coming (for a classic reference).
40 Miles distant from the Camera’s lens, I’m at the same elevation at that snowy far ridge “Red Hills” in this Layers of Landscape image. Big views from up here 👁 Spotlightling was rife that sunset (about a week ago). Your looking across the Montana/Wyoming border as I’m standing in Montana. It’s snowy where I am too. We got 4 inches of heavy wet snow but the ground in the valley’s got rain. Rinse and repeat all winter lolol. I have never seen it this green up here in OCTOBER up here in the 20 years I’ve lived here!!!!!!!
Geologic Note: The big Valley is the Little Powder River Drainage. It’s about 6 feet wide at the moment. It removed all that sediment between here and there though…. 🤔 From where I stand, the originally flat layers of sediments are Diving underground 50 feet every mile generally in that direction more underground. They dive into the LARGE Powder River Basin at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains 130 miles distant. The Basin is literally a downwarping of the earths crust forming a wave where the wave crest was eroded away to form the Big Horn Mountains, which wore away and filled up the wave trough (the bathtub next to the mountains where all the coal swamps formed) So the Dinosaur bone bearing Sand Beds that blanket my ranch disappear about two miles west of my house diving underground and younger rocks are on the surface. The BigHorns happened After the Dinosaurs 😎
The “Red Hills” are called such because they have a LOT of usually/mostly Red “Clinker” rocks which are coal fired “underclay” that turned to a natural ceramic by the underground fires. It is literally a coarse uneven ceramic in hardness and “Clinks” when it drops. Native Americans made a LOT of tools from it. Lewis and Clark thought it was of volcanic origin. Large outcrops of it exist all over the area and it’s mined as gravel for roads after crushing. Lots of rattle snakes live in “Clinker” dens. The Clinker shrinks as part of the process leaving voids which are homes for many creatures on the surface but often make for local perched water tables that occasionally are big enough for light local use.
This is a shot over the Little Powder River valley at the intersection of Trail Creek about 1 mile south of Montana. The mountains in the distance are in Montana, I’m standing in Wyoming. There was a LOT of grass this year. It’s still very green for late September.
