Karen’s Musings & Endurance Ride Stuff

I was really glad to make it to camp at Coso Junction.  I was surprised to pull in and find that I was the only one there!  Henry Griffin was supposed to be there for the ride, but after seeing the weather report for the weekend he went on home.   At least I had cell service if I needed it.

It didn’t take long to get the horses all set up.  I was able to park next to a fence with a group of trees.  That way I knew I’d have a partial windbreak if the wind did come up.  Got everything situated before it got dark.  I thought it was pretty funny that Bo had his own porcelain white toilet.  You just never know what kind of odd thing you’ll be camped next to at an endurance ride!

Now that it had gotten dark I decided to go inside and get warmed up.  When I left home it had been 10 degrees and it was now pretty obvious that nothing had warmed up much inside on the trip down.  I turned on the heater and put a kettle of water on the stove to help add to the heat.  I could open up a cupboard and the stuff inside was colder there than it was inside my refrigerator!  It was 40 degrees in the trailer when I started all of this.  I decided that maybe it would help speed things up (getting warm) if I were to cover the windows.  In a matter of minutes I had pillows or towels covering all of the windows adding an extra layer of insulation.  It still took hours to get the place warmed up, but once it did I never had to resort to such extreme tactics to keep it warmed up.  Since everything had been so thoroughly frozen through and through, my water pump still wouldn’t come on.  Rather than risk burning up the motor in it, I didn’t even try and instead waited till the next day when it fired up just fine.  Fortunately I had plenty of warm water to clean up with from the kettle on the stove.

During the night my fridge started beeping and my heater started blowing out cold air.  Ughhh!  I had to crawl out of the nice warm bed and go check the propane tanks.  I hadn’t filled up for this trip because I knew I still had at least a half a tank plus my spare full tank (tank #3) that I keep in the back of the trailer.  Yep, tank #1 was empty.  Switched over to tank #2 and went to get the 3rd tank.  It wasn’t there.  Uh oh.  Decided I better conserve the rest of what I did have.

Morning came and the plan was for Sue B. and me to take both of my horses out to mark trail.  I always like to help mark trail with the horses because it helps get the edge off of them prior to riding them in the ride. Plus, it’s just great experience for them to get out there.  They learn a lot trotting up to various bushes and trees, stopping immediately, standing still or sidepassing, backing up and maneuvering in closer to allow me to pin a trail marking ribbon onto something. Plus they also get to learn all about ribbons being attached to them, or to their tack and rider in various conditions like when it’s windy and everything is flapping and making noise.  Pretty soon nothing will phase them, and they no longer question why you want to stop for no apparent reason!  Another good thing they learn, is to play leap frog without flipping out that the other horse or horses are leaving them behind.  Chief and Bo still need more work in this area.  This was the first time they’ve been out to mark trail together, thanks to Sue for riding Bo.  They are quite attached to each other, and are not so much so when they are out with other horses when marking trail.

I got busy getting the horses tack and boots ready for riding.  We knew we had a lot of trail to mark today and wanted to try and get all of the horseback riding parts done in one day if possible.  Sue and the Duck arrived with Tony’s two horse bumper pull trailer that we were going to use to get the horse out to the trail with.  We got the horses loaded along with our helmets and other riding gear.  Just as I was about to hop in the back seat of the truck my phone rang….it was Hosebag Dave.  He wanted to know what the conditions were like and said he’d be coming down on Friday but wouldn’t get there till late afternoon.  He hoped he could make it out of his driveway since he had gotten even more snow at his place than I got.  During the conversation, Sue started diving us all north on Highway 395.  I hung up the phone and said “do we have ribbons?”.  Huh?  Ribbons?  You mean those things that are the whole reason we are hauling horses and going out all day – nah, why would be bother to bring those!  ROFL.  Okay, so up we go to the next turnaround and back to Coso.  Grabbed the ribbons out of the jeep.  Doh!

Now we are all set and really ready to go.  It took a good half hour to get out to the trail where we were going to start with the horses.  We could only trailer out so far because of the snow, and it was a rough jeep road.  On the way I pinned almost all of the ribbons we had onto hay strings.  We put those around our necks and that way we can access them easily while riding, and also have them with us when we get off for the low bushes.

I knew that trail marking today was going to take awhile because….there was going to be a lot of low bushes, and turns.  Annie was on her way up from Ridgecrest along with Joseph to help out, and had more ribbons with them.

Sue and I both has GPS’s with us, different models.  That way hopefully one of us would be able to get a good set of tracks.  We were supposed to remember to mark waypoints at turns or where there were trail changes and also make notes on a piece of paper.  Turns out I only marked four or five waypoints and most of my notes were something like “this is where we ran out of ribbons”.  Well, anyway….

The Duck had changed some of the trail around due to the storm that was coming in.  That way the horses wouldn’t be going into areas that might be dangerous or slippery if it did get really wet, and windy.  This meant that for the first mile and a half we had to pull ribbons.  That was easy enough.  Soon we got through that part and now started doing the markings for the actual ride.  For those that did the ride, this part was the first loop on both days.

We had to mark the trail going both directions.  That also slows you down especially on a horse because you have to continually look back to make sure you didn’t miss something from the other direction.  For each turn we put out three ribbons for the turn on both sides of it, plus at least one or two confidence markers.  So that meant we used between 8 and 10 ribbons for every turn.

I hadn’t checked my horses Renegades over very well that morning.  The straps on Bo’s hinds were starting to come undone because they didn’t have any O-rings.  I should have replaced them but was in a hurry.  Turned out that it was just easier to pull his hind boots off and ride him barefoot.  If I’d had more clips I would have taken Chief’s hinds off too, but it was easier to just leave them alone.  I like riding the horses barefoot as often as possible and since this trail was mostly good footing it worked out.

It wasn’t long before we were running pretty low on ribbons.  There were some sections that we used a lot of them to keep the riders from going into the deeper sand sections.  We tried to find the easiest route and both horses sunk pretty deep in the sand on the embankment that dropped onto the road.  I felt the bottom of my stirrups in the sand, anyway.  Bo also nearly catapulted ass over teakettle once but managed to save himself.  Sue didn’t seem phased.  Probably because her horse Rocky has trained her how to do acrobatic stunts when he does similar maneuvers.

We were really lucky that our cell phones worked.  I called and asked for more ribbons.  Okay, we’ll try to get there as soon as we can.  We had been out for a few hours already and the horses had done a pretty good amount of climbing.

Duck and Annie were in the jeep marking trail, and Joseph was in the truck helping as well.  We were happy when we got to the meeting point and within a couple of minutes Joseph showed up in the truck complete with ribbons AND water for the horses.  They were thirsty and really appreciated it!

We reloaded ourselves with ribbons again and set off.  We had a lot more climbing ahead, and several more turns.  We didn’t mark right off of the road so that riders going up that in the morning wouldn’t look over to the right and get on the trail we were now on.  The horses really worked going up and up.  We got to the top and marked the turn there.  We must have been going crazy with the ribbons because Sue and I both realized that we only had one ribbon left each!

The cell phone worked again and we arranged for another meeting point.  Again, it worked out well because the trail we were going down on was a singletrack with no other roads or trails so that kept us from having to go back and remark.  We reloaded with ribbons and got further instructions.  The next part was going to get a little more interesting because of all of the construction equipment.  A big pipeline is being put in and the road is dug up with a giant trench for miles right through the middle of the ride!  Fortunately the construction workers were really nice and accommodating and offered to fill in with dirt some crossing areas so that we could get the horses across.

We were kept busy marking and getting off frequently to mark the turns well where the bushes were low.  I can only hang down so low from the horse…sometimes it’s just easier to get on and off.  Again, more great experience for the horses – they learn to stand still when you get on and off, and also to move over next to rocks and berms to make it easier for us to get on, or to pin ribbons onto things.  See why trail marking is such great training for your horse?

The construction workers were really funny when I got to the point next to a giant tractor where they were working.  The trench was quite huge and they were encouraging me to jump the horse across it.  I walked over with Chief right next to the big tractor tines and stood and looked down.  Uhhhh…..no, I don’t think that would be a good idea.  “Oh come on, jump him over, he can do it!”.  They were taking bets.  Finally they showed me where I could go to get around, with some material they put down to walk Chief across.

From this point forward, Sue and I separated.  She was going to mark the trail the rest of the way back to camp then get the trailer and come and pick me up.  I was going to go out and mark the second loop for day 2.  Duck said don’t put up too many ribbons along the fenceline, which was good because then I didn’t worry about running out again.  Cruised along pretty good in this section, once we got through the trippy rocks in the early part.  Got to the far point and turned right then went down to the power line and rode back all of the way to the pavement.  I didn’t see Sue or the trailer there to pick me up anywhere.  We turned left to go to camp.

I called to see what was going on.  Turned out that Sue ran out of ribbons and had to have Tony bring her more back out and she finished up that last part.  She was right behind me and soon I could hear Bo whinny.  Chief turned around and whinnied back.  Oh boy, reunited again!  The horses were sure happy to see each other.  Tony drove back with the trailer so we did get to save the horses going back the last little bit into camp.  Sue walked on foot marking that part.  No need to ride it, since again the bushes are low enough that you can do it just as fast walking for that small of a section.

It’s funny sometimes how everything has a way of working out.  We sure lucked out having cell service and being able to get more ribbons each time we needed them.  Even better that Joseph could get the horses water once during the day.  We were out all day and didn’t get back to camp until dark.  It was a nice day for a ride though and I hoped that the ride weather would be just as good.

Another thing that worked out – Tony brought up a full up propane tank and replaced it with my empty one so I was all set and didn’t have to worry about running out of propane.  Yay!

Out of the two GPS’s we had, we only got some of the trail recorded on each of them.  Sue got more than I did.  We got enough though that the Duck was able to get the topographical maps done for the ride.  In real life, sometimes these things aren’t foolproof, especially in the hands of us fools!  Sometimes it’s the batteries that go out, and when you are on trail all day with your mind on other things you sometimes to forget to check constantly on your GPS’s battery life.

The trail was now almost entirely marked.  We did make a few more minor changes the next day but didn’t have to take the horses out again.  That worked out good since it gave Chief and Bo a day to rest before the ride started.  With the amount of riding they did, the edge was definitely off.

Up Next:  Riding the ride!

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