The JQS Road leading up to the Roan Plateau. These huge basins like the one we are approaching here are watered from the snowmelt trickling – or rushing- down from the heights above. At low elevation, you are in hard-grazed, kind of barren, juniper country, with cottonwoods along the creeks and washes, but as you climb, the junipers give way to a Gambel’s oak forest, with a mix of grasses. There are wild turkeys feeding on the acorns here, and big elk trails where the herds drop off the summer range on the Plateau, and the security-conscious bulls linger – it gets thicker as you go up toward the watered country, steeper, tougher, in places, just about impossible. A big bull’s- or a big mule deer buck’s- favorite description of a place hang out. When wildlife biologists talk about “diversity due to elevation gradient” this is what they are talking about- one kind of habitat down low, merging to entirely different ones as you go up, all supporting different plants and animals. I’d never really thought about it before, but here on the Roan it is obvious- you start off in dry and hot juniper, and end up in cool wind, columbines, elderberry thickets and aspen.