Rainbow Rim Trail, Grand Canyon XP First Day
Grand Canyon Scenery
I got to ride 50 miles yesterday. It was mine and Chief’s first endurance ride in five months. Boy am I sore today, but since I knew I was taking the day off I slept in and am now slowly moving about. Some of the first riders are in - Stephanie was first with Sharon and Crockett second and third.
Grand Canyon Rim Scenery
My ride yesterday went really well overall and I had a great time. Chief was his usual enthusiastic self and we really enjoyed getting to see all of the colors and gorgeous scenery of the Grand Canyon. It’s really neat to be able to ride through thick tall forests and then peek out over the North Rim of the GC! There is quite a bit of variety of scenery on this ride. What I really enjoy the most is that there is so much singletrack forest trail. We saw several deer, but I was never quick enough to get photos of any of them.
I took a lot of photos and will get them put into an album and posted to the XP website as soon as I can. Be sure to click on these photos to enlarge them. Tomorrow the ride goes on the Eastern Rim, which is also just gorgeous.
North Rim Scenery
I think the main reason I’m sore is from getting dumped early in the ride. Another rider had a horse that was out of control and that reared up over into us then took off galloping down the trail (without the rider), it kind of got Chief’s adrenalin up. He was really wired after that and soon did what was normally a small spook and I lost my balance and just plopped right off. Luckily I landed pretty easily and got right back on and kept going. I think that Chief was surprised that I came off and stood there staring at me like “what are you doing???” That’s the first time anything like that has happened to me while riding Chief on a ride (7600+ miles with him!), but my balance isn’t so great right now. There were a few other times yesterday that I thought I might fall off, just because I really am not that strong. Fortunately Chief was happy to do his super fast walk so we did that a lot, which is really easy and comfortable to do. It was sure nice to be out there again. I was also pleased that the Renegade boots I used on Chief worked well - not only did they work really well but they were flawless in that I didn’t have to touch them one single time all day long. I’ll post a more thorough review later of the Renegades, including a couple of modifications and adjustments I made. It just so happened that the first place horse today uses them. I asked Stephanie earlier about how many miles she gets out of hers and she said about 600 competition miles with another 100 to 150 training miles.
Dave and Okay fell in the mud
I helped for a bit at the finish line today. When Dave and Kerry (who is riding my horse Bo) came in for lunch (today is the only day that lunch is in camp), Dave was covered in mud as was his horse Rushcreek Okay. They had been in a large mud puddle drinking when the horse just slipped and fell in. Bo sure looked good but Kerry said is in such good shape that he was pulling a lot, so he got put into a myler combination bit for the second half of the day. All of the riders seem to be having a great time and talking about how beautiful the trail and scenery is.
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October 10th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I’m so glad you’re back in competition astride Chief! And, I envy you! I rafted the Colorado through Grand Canyon last year, but I have yet to see it from the back of a horse. Someday…