Northern Rancher said:
I don't like crossing live water at the best of times-most times we take a boat and lead the horses across. There's been two guys drown right at my buddies headquarters on a lazy slow river.
We were just on an exploring trip, and had come down a few hundred feet of a very steep hill. JF stayed on his horse all the way down, but the other fellow and I got off, walked and led our horses down. I could just see a horse taking a mis-step and tumbling all the way to the bottom, so decided to go pedestrian-style. Our intentions were to stay on the north side of the river, but after arriving at the bottom, that was not an option. A straight up-and-down cliff came right to the water's edge.
The wind was howling that day, too, but it was a west wind and we were traveling in an easterly direction. When we reached the bottom where Bear Creek joined the Niobrara, we decided that was a good place for our dinner stop. We discussed our options, either ford the river or go back up the few hundred feet of steep sandy hill that we had just come down. We elected to cross the river.
After the horses went down in the deep water, we both blundered out to the other icy shore through waist-deep water. I found an old dead log to lean against while dumping the water out of my boots. After getting our land-lubber bearings once again, we mounted up to resume our ride. It was kind of a chilly proposition to go the remaining six or seven miles to where we had a pickup parked.
