Up on top, in the saddle between the buttes, a 500-foot climb from the rocky two-track below, sits a rock. Plunked there by a volcano, created first in a cauldron of fire, it’s a chunk of stone pockmarked by eons of fire and ice.

A boulder about the size of a subcompact car, it has a cleft in its center, like a Yugo on which a tree has fallen. The dust of centuries has piled around it and it makes for a pretty good seat on a nice day. But nice days are hard to come by late in chukar season.