The lower part of this canyon, just past Harmel's Ranch, is part of the Almont Triangle Wildlife preserve. On the day I drove it, the resident bighorn sheep were leaping about the cliffs. Snow at higher elevations had also driven down elk, deer and a pair of coyotes, skulking warily over a fresh kill. At Almont, I turned north to head toward the Elk Mountains and Crested Butte. A few miles farther on, it is not uncommon to land in the midst of a cattle drive.
Cowboys move the herds up valley to summer pasture and down again in the fall.
The trick is to keep moving. Stop the car, and the dimwitted creatures surround you and freeze. Ohio Creek drops through silvery aspen groves past the Castles, a cluster of rock turrets and walls on the edge of the West Elk Wilderness. It winds up in Gunnison, a cow town whose last moment of fame was in 1883, when Alferd Packer was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murder and cannibalism. Traveling west out of Gunnison on Highway 50, I soon reached Colorado's largest lake, Blue Mesa Reservoir.